Chelsea: Jeremie Boga a better buyback than Bournemouth’s ex-Blue

Jeremie Boga joined Nathan Ake in the buyback rumour mill. The £36 million separating the two buyback clauses is almost a standalone argument for which player Chelsea should buy and which they should leave alone.

The rumours of Nathan Ake’s return to Chelsea received a boost this morning as Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe said Ake would be out for six weeks with a hamstring injury. If there’s one thing Chelsea looks for in their prospective defenders, it’s an injury that will prevent them from immediately contributing to the side and that will hang over them for at least their first season with the club. With hamstring injuries having the highest rates of re-incidence in sports, this malady moves Ake one step closer to his development club.

Or maybe Chelsea only likes buying injured defenders from Italian clubs. On the subject of Italian clubs, the Blues sold Jeremie Boga to Sassuolo for about £2.5 million last summer. Either because both sides completely underestimated him or Chelsea very low-key rated him highly and had some sly long-term machinations in mind, they included a buyback clause of only £3.5 million. That meant a relatively slight improvement or over-performance by Boga could make a buyback a smart and potentially profitable move, even if only for a quick resale.

Flip this footballer, if you will.

Boga has four goals in 13 Serie A appearances this season, with two of those goals coming against league leaders Inter Milan and Juventus, each club managed by a Chelsea ex who sent Boga out on loan.

TransferMarkt estimates Boga’s market value is already up to £10 million. Chelsea could turn a 300% or greater profit just by having him on the books for a few days in January. Or they could keep him as a younger and cheaper alternative to Wilfried Zaha, and a much cheaper alternative to Jadon Sancho.

Boga plays primarily on the left but can play across the front line. That level of versatility, especially as part of replacing Willian and Pedro, is part of what is driving the rumours around Zaha. It would allow Boga to interchange well with Callum Hudson-Odoi and Christian Pulisic both in terms of squad rotation and positioning on the pitch.

Jeremie Boga is not rated as highly as Jadon Sancho, and the transfer fees reflect that. But transfer fees represent risk as much as potential.

Much like in his current situation, Boga would not need to do much at Chelsea to be worth a £3.5 million buyback. And barring some absolute catastrophe, regardless of how he performs, the Blues will almost certainly be able to make some profit on his eventual sale. At 22, his value is only going to go up.

On the other hand, Sancho may have a higher ceiling than Boga but that also means he could fall much further to the floor. If Sancho (or any other player at a similar price) does not meet the very high minimal expectations, all the usual recriminations towards the player and the club – the ones Chelsea are just now starting to avoid – will come flooding back.

The same logic applies to Nathan Ake, except no one places him at the same level as Jadon Sancho. Ake’s buyback clause is double what Bournemouth paid for him. Whereas Chelsea would basically be refunding Sassuolo’s money for Boga and buying him for a quarter of his market value, the Blues would be handing Bournemouth a hefty profit in order to pay slightly more than his valuation. That’s not the sort of smart business Chelsea have started doing over the last few months.

Ake would need to greatly overperform expectations while being in an odd middle ground among defenders.

He would be alongside Antonio Rudiger, for whom Chelsea paid about £30 million; Kurt Zouma, whose loan fees have already covered his transfer fee; and Fikayo Tomori, who has been at Chelsea for most of his life. Elsewhere in the Premier League, the defenders setting the bar Ake would need to reach range from the out-of-nowhere-for-£18 million Caglar Soyuncu to £75 million Virgil Van Dijk.

Everything about Ake is uncomfortably in the middle except for the expectations around him: those are uncomfortably high.

All this is further confounded by the fact that Ake is a Chelsea youth product. The finances and emotions involved there leave this situation as clear as mud before anyone even bothers to assess the football aspects.

Jeremie Boga’s is as close to a no-risk proposition as football will ever present. Nothing about Nathan Ake’s situation points to a clear course of action. As far as buybacks go, Sassuolo should expect a phone call before Bournemouth.