For weeks, Chelsea have been working hard to address one of the biggest weaknesses in their squad, which is on the wings. Last summer, Chelsea added a trio of wingers to their team in Joao Felix, Pedro Neto, and Jadon Sancho, but only one of them will remain for the 2025/26 season.
Neto proved he deserved to stay with a masterful winger’s performance against LAFC in the Club World Cup. Felix was a disaster and got loaned off to AC Milan, where he remained a disaster.
Sancho was a tougher call, but Chelsea opted not to sign him permanently, since they want to aim for world-class players who can win them a Champions League one day, rather than settling for players who are merely above-average for them.
Their chase for a left winger to complement Neto on the right has led them mostly to England international Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, who is ripe and ready to leave Borussia Dortmund this summer after being one of Europe’s biggest breakout stars in the first half of the season.
Chelsea are already halfway to signing Gittens
In the second half of the season, Bynoe-Gittens’s numbers fell off with the disciplinarian and highly defensive Niko Kovac at the helm. Kovac greatly helped Dortmund as a team with this approach, but Gittens was more subdued with his approach.
Chelsea are working hard on a proposal to bring Gittens to Stamford Bridge at a reasonable cost, and Fabrizio Romano reports that the Blues currently consider the 20-year-old as their priority transfer target this summer, having already come to terms with the player on a deal.
Now, Chelsea just have to get Dortmund to say yes, and they will have one of the splashiest summer signings of the Premier League transfer window sealed to match reigning champions Liverpool’s acquisition of top Bundesliga playmaker Florian Wirtz.
But Bynoe-Gittens isn’t the only high-upside 20-year-old future superstar left winger on Chelsea’s radar. Romano also says that Chelsea have inquired to Lyon about their latest gem, Malick Fofana, who was nearly as impressive as Rayan Cherki last season but flew under the radar.
Bringing goals from the left wing
The dynamic Fofana could be seen as an alternative to Bynoe-Gittens, but it would actually make a lot of sense for Chelsea to hedge their bets and snag both, sealing the left wing position as fixed for the next decade.
Fofana had a beautiful season for Lyon, showing real end product for his age with six Europa League goals in just 513 minutes and nearly 10 total goal contributions in Ligue 1.
A positive creator who is so hard to stop one-on-one, Fofana is a different player to Bynoe-Gittens in that he’s more off-the-ball than an explosive athlete. But he’s a great athlete in his own right and certainly the caliber of prospect to join Todd Boehly’s growing army of young guns at Stamford Bridge.
As Chelsea work their way towards making a Bynoe-Gittens signing from Dortmund official, they’d be wise to keep calling another club known for producing elite talent, Lyon, with a competitive offer for this French Fofana with a Ligue 1 background.
The editor of The Trivela Effect, Joe Soriano has been covering world football for nearly a decade. His articles have been read by players, linked to mainstream sites, and gone viral on social media. He also manages the Real Madrid site A Trip to Cibeles and helps run the Tottenham site Hotspur HQ. Joe even covers pro wrestling, managing Let Them Wrestle.