With Jean-Michael Aulas, Lyon’s president, confirming that his club will be keeping Malo Gusto, in our view, the door could be open for Chelsea to hijack Tottenham’s move for Pedro Porro.
This comes after a warning from Ben Jacobs on Thursday afternoon, who stated that if Chelsea couldn’t land Gusto, they may well enter the race for Porro.
Aulas has been firm that he won’t be selling Gusto this month, so Chelsea will have to look at alternate targets.
“Malo, a great hope for OL, will continue to play with OL until 06/30/23,” Aulas said in a tweet.
Tottenham have been looking to sign Porro as a replacement for the underperforming wing-backs, Emerson Royal and Matt Doherty.
Antonio Conte’s 3-4-3 system heavily relies on wing-backs, making Porro a great fit for the team. However, Spurs will have to act fast as they’ve been warned by Jacobs that rivals, such as Chelsea, may start to circle in the coming days.
Porro is keen on a move to the Premier League and Spurs are in pole position to sign him, but they cannot afford to dawdle here.
Chelsea, as we all know, have a knack of hijacking deals recently.
They successfully hijacked Arsenal’s pursuit of Mykhaylo Mudryk earlier this month, and they could do the same with Tottenham’s move for Porro.
With Porro having a €45m release clause, it makes skipping club-to-club negotiations very easy for Chelsea. They can trigger the release clause, and if they offer the right pay-packet, Porro will be theirs.
Chelsea have been linked with Porro throughout this window, but they had set their sights on Gusto as their top target.
However, now that a January move for Gusto is off the table, they’ll have to look for another right-back, and Porro is a viable option staring them in the face right now.
All parties may be confident that Spurs will land Porro, but we heard exactly the same about Mudryk and Arsenal before Chelsea swooped.
The Blues could well have another high-profile hijack up their sleeve here.
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