Andrey Santos has had an excellent season, and took things up a gear once again on Friday night when he scored for Strasbourg against Lyon to open the scoring in a 4-2 win. That was his 10th goal of the season.
His loan for our sister club has gone phenomenally well – the only regrets we can possibly have are regrets that we didn’t keep him around the first team this season – who knows what we could have done with him in our ranks.
Now under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t worry about a thing – he’s had a great loan and should be back playing with us in just a couple of months at the Club World Cup.
But the way our current sporting directors operate, we can never quite be confident in their next move.
Selling Santos now would be patently crazy, but their model is all about shifting players for a profit, and there’s no offer they wouldn’t consider, if it was large enough.
There have been links to Bayern, AC Milan and even Monaco in recent weeks. We’re really hoping that this is just a sign of how well he’s playing, rather than the real first rumblings of a sale.
Santos’s recent words in an interview certainly didn’t fill us with hope, as he revealed he hadn’t heard from Chelsea about their plans for him.
There is certainly going to be plenty of competition in midfield next season, with Dario Essugo joining Santos and a hopefully fit again Romeo Lavia in backing up Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo.
But that’s not excessive – that’s just the sort of depth we want to have in the squad.
Under no circumstances can we think that Santos is dispensable.
