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Chelsea round-up: Deal for full-back possible; Hazard advised to leave; star rejects Barcelona

Chelsea have received a massive boost in their pursuit of Valencia’s right sided player Joao Cancelo as  claim that the club are desperate to sell the 22-year-old for their asking price of £26 million, with Barcelona also tracking the Portugal international.

Cancelo is capable of playing anywhere on the right-hand side, having played in every position from full-back to in a front three, and can also play on the left, so would be a great addition for Antonio Conte as they look to add depth to their squad for next season.

However, former Tottenham and Arsenal defender Sol Campbell has told  that he believes that Belgian forward Eden Hazard must leave the club if he is to truly become one of the world’s greatest players. He explained:

“At the moment he is definitely up there for this season because his performances have been exemplary. He’s also going international as well, so you have got to do both at international level and for your team… You almost need to sometimes go to Real Madrid or Barcelona to be truly world class. He is world class but in the perception of people’s minds sometimes you have got to go to those clubs to kind of almost say ‘look, I’ve played at the biggest clubs in the world’.”

It seems unlikely that Hazard will be going anywhere anytime soon, though, with the key man seemingly happy in London with his performances returning to the high level that saw him named PFA Player of the Year as recently as 2015.

One man who could have joined one of those so called huge clubs was Marcos Alonso, as he told the  that he chose a move to Stamford Bridge over the possibility of moving to Barcelona as he revealed:

“There were some great teams interested in me in the summer but I decided to join Chelsea because they are a team that I had always liked. I think there was some conversations [with Barcelona] but the truth is that at that point it was not in my plans to leave Fiorentina. It was only when the interest from Chelsea arrived in the summer when I started to consider to make a change. I saw a possibility of succeeding here. I had some other offers from other teams from Italy and Spain but when Chelsea came to get me, I did not think twice.”

Expectations were fairly low when the former Bolton loanee joined the club from Fiorentina in the summer, but he has excelled as a left wing-back with freedom to roam forward in addition to his defensive strength.

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