Chelsea have agreed to let the defender Kurt Zouma leave on a loan deal to Everton, according to reports from the French newspaper L’Equipe. The battle for the Merseyside club will now be to wrap up a deal before the transfer window shuts at 5PM BST today.
He may be the second centre-half to arrive at Everton today with a deal for the Barcelona defender Yerry Mina thought to be all-but complete - he was reported to be undergoing a medical in Liverpool this afternoon.
That news comes as a further blow to the aspirations that Manchester United held for today’s transfer business, with Zouma reportedly having been yet another central defensive target which the Red Devils have failed to land this summer.
L’Equipe report that United made a bid for a permanent deal for the player, one which was rejected because Chelsea a) didn’t want to lose the player for good and, b) didn’t want to strengthen a direct Premier League rival.
If these reports are to be believed then we can now add Zouma to the lengthy list of targets that Jose Mourinho’s board have failed to land for him in a position that he’s publicly willed to be strengthened during this window.
Tottenham’s Belgian defender Toby Alderweireld, Leicester City’s Harry Maguire and the aforementioned Yerry Mina are just some of the players that the club had been interested in signing.
This will do nothing to brighten the mood around Old Trafford ahead of their season opener their against the Foxes tomorrow night, with an increasingly grim feeling emanating from a club that seems to be wrapped up in Jose Mourinho’s moroseness to a worrying extent for fans.
