Chelsea: Mateo Kovacic will not interfere with Tiemoue Bakayoko’s plans

Chelsea will likely confirm one of the few pieces of transfer business they can conduct this summer, and with a few days to spare. Signing Mateo Kovacic should not disrupt any plans the club had for Tiemoue Bakayoko.

With the clock approaching midnight, when Mateo Kovacic would turn into a pumpkin, or, worse, revert to being a Real Madrid player, Chelsea appear set to pay about £45 million to make his loan a permanent transfer.

The Blues were only a few days from losing their control of the situation. Like their other loaner, Gonzalo Higuain, Kovacic is registered to Chelsea through June 30. Unlike Higuain, the Blues actually want to keep Kovacic, and will not celebrate the dawn of July 1 with “Yay, he’s gone! Now let’s never speak of this again.”

Hopefully this signing is one of the first things to come from technical adviser Petr Cech. Given his transfer fee, the club should have a plan for Kovacic to play a regular part in the squad. It would be quite foolish for Chelsea to view Kovacic as a wait-and-see player heading into preseason. They do not want another high-wage, mid-career player going into the loan army this summer, assuming they could find a team who would want and could afford him on those terms.

Perhaps because of their similar age and unsettled status with their parent clubs, on top of playing the same already-crowded position at Chelsea, Mateo Kovacic’s future has often been jumbled together with talk of Tiemoue Bakayoko’s.

The Blues already have an abundance of players for central / central defensive midfield. N’Golo Kante is the indispensable man. Jorginho would be almost impossible to unload without taking a large financial loss, and that gives short shrift to a man who hopefully can do more than what little Maurizio Sarri always saw in him. Add in Kovacic and Bakayoko while assuming Chelsea play some sort of double pivot formation, and Chelsea have four players for two spots, but in reality, three players competing for the one non-Kante spot. And all that assumes Danny Drinkwater will not be the comeback player of the century.

This pile-up, with Kovacic about to be a full member of the squad, should not deter Chelsea or Bakayoko from continuing with their plans and ambitions.

Kovacic and Bakayoko are sufficiently different that incoming manager Frank Lampard will have plenty of opportunities to use both over the course of the season or a game. Bakayoko is a better defender than Kovacic, and, partnered with N’Golo Kante, would work best when Chelsea are defending deep.

Kovacic is more of a two-way player and better in transition than Bakayoko. He could be more of the all-purpose swing player in the double pivot, covering the majority of situations. Kovacic is arguably better at breaking up counter-attacks before they get too far along, mainly because he generally plays higher up the pitch than Bakayoko. One test for Bakayoko in preseason and his early opportunities in the season is how much he can contribute to Chelsea’s transition to attack, particularly when the play is quickly changing directions near midfield. This was where Kovacic had much of his best impact last season, and where he could make himself the regular starter.

Finally, when Chelsea are going for their most attacking option, they could play Jorginho in midfield with Kante. Kante would drop deeper to protect Jorginho defensively, as he is accustomed to doing, while Jorginho keeps the passing and possession moving just behind the other midfielder and forwards.

Neither Bakayoko nor Kovacic will be short-changed on playing time if they are competing for the starting spot. The Blues will be back in four competitions and Frank Lampard will certainly spread out playing minutes much more broadly than Maurizio Sarri did.

Tiemoue Bakayoko will also have the opportunity to pick up starts as Kante’s deputy, especially in the domestic cups. Chelsea may not adopt the strong defensive posture of a Kante – Bakayoko midfield pair very often in the Premier League, but Bakayoko could fill in for Kante against lower-tier opponents, anchoring the midfield among (presumably) the more junior players Lampard would play in those competitions.

Chelsea probably overpaid for Mateo Kovacic, which means they probably the risk of not having him and wishing they had him weighed heavily on their minds. However, he will have many opportunities to validate their decision.

After all the uncertainty around his time at Real Madrid and his season at loan, he should be willing to let intra-squad competition bring out the best in him. As Chelsea return to using their full depth chart at midfield, Kovacic will be better off competing with Tiemoue Bakayoko than repetitively replacing Ross Barkley (or vice versa) in the 70′.