Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca in conversation with Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner as their sides meet in the Premier League | Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Imagesplaceholder image
Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca in conversation with Crystal Palace boss Oliver Glasner as their sides meet in the Premier League | Vince Mignott/MB Media/Getty Images | Getty Images
Oliver Glasner and Enzo Maresca both want to upgrade their Premier League squads in January
Crystal Palace may be serial trophy winners these days and one of the favourites to lift European silverware, but the issue of bigger teams poaching their best players is as problematic as ever, and will remain until they outgrow Real Madrid in stature (seriously, just ask Liverpool).
Having recorded their first and third biggest sales in the last two summers to Arsenal and Bayern Munich (sandwiching Aaron Wan-Bissaka to Manchester United), the Eagles will be once again gearing up to protect their most prized assets in January. Marc Guehi will be leaving in the next 11 months regardless, unless he pulls a huge personal u-turn while Adam Wharton is on the radars of all of Europe’s superclubs and is also certain to be the centre of a summer bidding war.
As Wolverhampton Wanderers have found out much to their chagrin in recent years - and Southampton discovered before then - losing your best players is an inevitability, but it’s how you replace them that really matters and it can sink a club if they don’t get it right. Daniel Munoz is another player who’s emerged near the top of plenty of Champions League-level shopping lists, with Chelsea one of the rumoured interested parties.
And helpfully The Blues have a player to offer in exchange, who could help Palace execute a seamless transition from Guehi in the heart of defence: Trevoh Chalobah.
Daniel Munoz a surprise Chelsea target
Aged 29, Munoz appears a pretty bizarre target for Chelsea given both their devotion to buying youth in the transfer market and their depth at right-back including the club captain.
It gets slightly less confusing when you consider that depth has missed almost 150 games combined in the last three full seasons. Malo Gusto has never been absent for fewer than 13 matches over that spell while Reece James’ injury troubles are well-documented. Chelsea’s pool of players who can cover at right-back in a pinch is pretty thin, too.
That, combined with Enzo Maresca’s apparent wishes to trial James and Gusto in midfield lessen their workload, is why Chelsea could be targeting Munoz who fulfils the profile the Italian wants at right-back. The Blues are at their best when they have a right-back who’s able to bomb forward and join in attacks, and Munoz has proven he’s one of the best in the world at that in the last year or so.
He’s in the top 10% of full-backs in Europe’s top five leagues for goals, expected goals and assists and shots on target (according to Opta via FBref) while he also gets through more than his fair share of defensive work. If he was five years younger he’d be a much more in-demand player but even so, having world and La Liga champions (who were within four minutes of reaching the Champions League final last season) after you is pretty good going.
The Blues will have a fight on their hands to keep the Colombian away from Catalonia, but that’s where Chalobah comes in.
Chalobah the perfect make-weight to replace Guehi and complete move
Chalobah starred for Crystal Palace in the first half of 2024/25 before Chelsea wrenched him back to Stamford Bridge to become a key player down the stretch, and notably in the Club World Cup where he started in the last three knockout games.
A ball-playing centre-half in the same mould as Guehi, the players were born almost exactly a year apart and moved to adjacent areas of London at an early age. They were both recruited into Chelsea’s academy before undertaking several loan spells, with their paths never really crossing in The Blues’ youth ranks. Neither player boasts the strongest defensive stats on paper, but they can more than hold their own on the ground and in the air, while excelling in possession.
Willing and able to push the ball up the pitch arguably even more than Guehi, Chalobah would provide the smoothest of transitions from the England international. He may not be quite the rock-solid foundation that Premier League-winning defences are built upon - think Virgil van Dijk, Vincent Kompany, John Terry and Riccardo Carvalho, Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic.
But there’s more than enough room below that to carve out a fantastic career at the highest level and Crystal Palace are almost the perfect side to achieve that.
Munoz is reportedly worth €30 million (£26.5m) though it’s unclear if that’s an official price tag while Chelsea were demanding £40m for Chalobah last January, a fee which is unlikely to have come down in the intervening months.
Three years Chalobah’s senior, Munoz’s contract expires in 2028 the same as the Englishman so next year will be the prime time for each of them to make a move. A swap deal plus around £15m-£20m would be more than fulfill the needs of both clubs and give each player the next step he needs.
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