Fabrizio Romano has today repeated the line from Brentford that they’re not keen on selling their star striker Ivan Toney in January, and will instead hold out for a major fee in the summer.
In the Caughtoffside Daily Briefing column, Romano said that the Bees’ priority was staying up this season, and that would mean keeping their top goal threat around once he was back from his suspension for gambling:
“Brentford will try any way to keep Ivan Toney in January and then sell him in the summer. It’s still not clear if this will be possible but they will try.
“I’m not aware of any precise info on release clauses and a new deal with Brentford as of today.
“As of now, there is only interest from Arsenal and Chelsea, still no concrete negotiations.”
That puts Chelsea in something of a predicament – if they really want Toney, but don’t want to wait until the summer, and aren’t happy with the options they’ve got, what do they do?
One major hope everywhere you look is that Christopher Nkunku returns from injury and brings the goals we need. If he hits the ground running, we can see the club taking the risk of not signing a striker and letting Nkunku, Armando Broja and Nicolas Jackson keep grinding until the end of the season.
