Chelsea will reportedly reject any loan offers for one of their stars as Enzo Maresca wants to sell the £23million player permanently this summer.
The Blues have a large number of players they need to offload this transfer window, especially after spending £210m on seven signings so far.
Moreover, after being heavily fined by UEFA for breaching financial rules, it is reported that the club need to raise at least £60m in order to register their new signings for next season’s Champions League.
They are well-placed to do so with Noni Madueke seemingly on his way to Arsenal while Borussia Dortmund want to re-sign Carney Chukwuemeka after his loan spell ended.
To that end, as reported by Fabrizio Romano, the club have also decided they will not accept any loan offers for Lesley Ugochukwu, whose time at Stamford Bridge is all but over.
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Ugochukwu signed a seven-year contract when he joined from Rennes in 2023 in a transfer worth just over £23m.
Mauricio Pochettino opted to slowly integrate the young defensive midfielder into his first-team, giving him just 15 appearances and only six starts in his debut season.
But with Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia ahead in the pecking order, Maresca loaned the 21-year-old out to Southampton last campaign where he suffered relegation.
While the Saints narrowly avoided becoming the worst team in Premier League history, Ugochukwu put in decent performances and is now attracting interest from clubs around Europe, including Valencia.
Several Premier League sides are keen too, but Chelsea will only accept a permanent transfer, though the France U21 star’s price tag is not known.
BBC Sport do report however that if an acceptable bid is not made they will consider a loan to a Premier League rival and if that does not materialise by the end of the summer, a loan abroad will be sanctioned.
Recently, Maresca explicitly told the Chelsea squad that they were free to leave the club if they were not content, saying: ‘My message to the players and to the club is that I want just players that are happy to be with us.
‘The ones that are not happy, they are free to go.’
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