Chelsea have had a £44m bid plus add-ons of £13.2m for Edin Dzeko and Emerson Palmieri accepted and hope to sign them before the transfer window closes next week.
While negotiations with Palmieri, a left-back, will be straightforward Dzeko, who spent five years at Manchester City, will still need convincing to return to the Premier League and is seeking assurances over the amount of game-time he will enjoy.
Signing a 31-year-old goes against Chelsea’s recent transfer policy – they offer only one-year extensions to players on the books who are over 30 – but they are willing to bend their own rules to secure the Bosnian and are expected to offer him a contract through to at least 2020. Dzeko was named in the Roma side who faced Sampdoria on Wednesday night, with the club’s sporting director Monchi confirming that he has yet to agree personal terms.
“Roma, like every club in the world, listen to the offers that arrive for their players, not just for Edin, but anyone in the squad,” he told Mediaset Premium. “We are ready to listen and then we decide. Now Dzeko is here and the rest doesn’t matter, which means the offer that arrived is not interesting. “I don’t know what personal terms were offered to the player, as I am not his agent. I am talking about Roma: an offer arrives, we look at it and then decide.”
Chelsea have been looking for a striker to ease the workload for Álvaro Morata. The Premier League champions made an inquiry for West Ham’s Andy Carroll last week only for the striker to injure an ankle. Antonio Conte, Chelsea’s manager, is an admirer of Dzeko, who scored twice against Chelsea this season as Roma drew 3-3 at Stamford Bridge in the Champions League, and is desperate to add to his strikeforce for the second half of the season.
Dzeko, who played for Manchester City between 2011 and 2016 before joining the Serie A side, won Serie A’s Golden Boot last season and has nine goals in 19 games this campaign. Palmieri is a Brazilian left-back who joined Roma in 2015, initially on loan. The Italian champions, Juventus, had also been interested in signing the 23-year-old. Palmieri is being brought in as back-up to Marcos Alonso at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea have offered Michy Batshuayi on loan as part of the deal but Roma are exploring other possibilities to replace Dzeko should he leave in this window.
Borussia Dortmund, however, view Batshuayi as a possible replacement for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang if the Gabon international joins Arsenal and Sevilla are also interested in signing the Belgian.
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