Chelsea’s season in in serious danger of collapsing if they do not sign a striker and a midfielder this month.<\/p>\n
The Blues are on the verge of Carabao Cup elimination, entering Thursday night’s semi-final second leg against Tottenham with a 1-0 deficit, and their 2-0 defeat to Arsenal on Saturday leaves them just three points clear in fourth.<\/p>\n
Gonzalo Higuain is reportedly close to joining on loan until the end of the season, while the club have been linked with Cagliari midfielder Nicolo Barella as Cesc Fabregas’ replacement.<\/p>\n
Maurizio Sarri even admitted he left Jorginho on the pitch against Newcastle even though he should’ve been removed, due to a simple lack of options.<\/p>\n
It’s bizarre that the club find themselves in such a desperate position, given they have almost 40 players out on loan at various clubs.<\/p>\n
Here, talkSPORT.com takes a look at some of the loanees who would be useful in the club’s current predicament…<\/p>\n
Tammy Abraham is the Championship’s top goalscorer despite missing the first six games of the season. That’s the kind of form which makes you sit up and take notice.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old was linked with a January switch to Wolves, but now it looks like he will see out his season-long loan at Villa Park.<\/p>\n
Abraham can do it all: he operates mainly as a target man, but his pace and technique allow him to run off the shoulder.<\/p>\n
In other words, he’s exactly what Chelsea are missing. And while he’s unproven in the Premier League, it’s surely got to be a better bet than Eden Hazard wasting away in a false-nine role.<\/p>\n
Mason Mount, 19, has been a revelation on loan at Derby, building on his good work at Vitesse last term where he was named the club’s Player of the Season.<\/p>\n
Although the attacking midfielder doesn’t represent an alternative to Jorginho, he would be more-than useful in the absence of the injured Ruben Loftus-Cheek.<\/p>\n
The Blues are heavily reliant on Mateo Kovacic on the left of their midfield three, with Ross Barkley failing to impress when called upon in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
Mount can drive from deep and, unlike Kovacic, contributes in the goal department.<\/p>\n
Hear me out. Tiemoue Bakayoko’s debut season in England couldn’t have been much worse, I know.<\/p>\n
However, he was poorly managed by Antonio Conte, who gave him no time to adjust to the intensity of the Premier League.<\/p>\n
Look at his former Monaco midfielder partner Fabinho – after a shaky start, he was given time to adapt by Jurgen Klopp, and now he looks the real deal.<\/p>\n
Bakayoko has breathed new life into his career at AC Milan, reminding everybody of the enormous talent he showed in France, and he would inject some much-needed power into light Chelsea’s midfield.<\/p>\n
Lewis Baker is something of a loan warrior: Reading recently became the sixth club he has been loaned out to during his Chelsea career.<\/p>\n
At the age of 23, you wonder whether he will ever get his chance at Chelsea, and if not now, when?<\/p>\n
Jose Mourinho, in 2014, said he should be blamed if Baker would not become a senior\u00a0England\u00a0international under his management, while former MK Dons manager Karl Robinson described him as the ‘hardest working player he has ever coached’.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the Arsenal defeat, Sarri slammed his players for their attitude, describing them as ‘extremely difficult to motivate’.<\/p>\n
He would have no such issue with Baker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea’s season in in serious danger of collapsing if they do not sign a striker and a midfielder this month. The Blues are on the verge of Carabao Cup elimination, entering Thursday night’s semi-final second leg against Tottenham with a 1-0 deficit, and their 2-0 defeat to Arsenal on Saturday leaves them just three points…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}