Chelsea are in desperate need of center back help, and while veteran Tosin Adarabioyo is someone the club would like to move on from permanently in the summer transfer window, that would be if they were able to find a replacement after the season ends.
During the season, Adarabioyo is, regrettably, an important player to Chelsea with Levi Colwill still out injured and questions abound regarding both the quality and depth of the center back position.
So Tosin’s latest injury is a huge blow to the Blues and makes an already thin center back situation that much more dire, doubling the club’s necessity of signing a new central defender.
Chelsea have no proven center back targets
Right now, Chelsea do not have a single proven center back transfer on their January radar, as, instead, they are after another young prospect in Jeremy Jacquet of Rennes.
Even though Jacquet is mostly a signing for the future, going after Jacquet is not that bad in a vacuum, because he is such a good player that he is probably already an upgrade over people like Tosin and Trevoh Chalobah.
But the real issue now is that Chelsea may not even be able to benefit from Jacquet this season. According to a new report from top French transfer insider Fabrice Hawkins of RMC Sport, Rennes do not want to sell Jeremy Jacquet to Chelsea during the 2025/26 season.
Instead, Rennes want to keep hold of Jacquet until the end of the campaign. So in order to further appease Rennes beyond potentially paying an insane 70 million euros for the player, the Blues are now willing to sign Jacquet just to loan him back to Rennes for the remaining six months of the season.
Not only would Chelsea be paying elite center back money for Jacquet, who is not an elite player yet, but they would also be depriving themselves of a necessary center back upgrade this season, which would have been 70 percent of the point of signing Jacquet in the first place.
It is more infuriating news for a Chelsea fan base that is already incredibly frustrating with how Todd Boehly and Co. have mismanaged the center back position, which ended up costing the club its best manager since Thomas Tuchel in Enzo Maresca, who was fuming even before the season started about how Chelsea did not adequately plan at center back – let alone address the severe injury to Levi Colwill. They are only proving him right.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2010. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has run sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling.