Good morning.

As expected, Demba Ba’s representatives have revealed that they do not expect Ba to join Chelsea after talks last night were unproductive between Ba and Chelsea over any potential deal.

Demba Ba was never going to be joining Chelsea, that much is a fact. That his representatives were so open about interest from Chelsea tells me that they were laying bait down for other clubs to come sniffing. This supposed “interest” from Chelsea is nothing more than a decoy whilst they fish around for more lucrative deals for their client. Conveniently, the news of Demba Ba was broken just after Chelsea had beaten Everton 2-1 at Goodison Park and the team doing the analysis for Sky Sports on the QPR v Liverpool match broke the news. What a perfect time for an agent to contact Sky and leak a bit of news such as that.

For Demba Ba to leave Newcastle, all that any club has to do is invoke his £7 million release clause and after that, there’s not much Newcastle can do other than beg to the heavens that Ba doesn;t fancy the contract on offer.

Chelsea fans, understandably, will be gutted that Ba won’t be joining them. Initially, before I actually thought about, I believed Ba to Chelsea would be a stunning purchase for the Blues. The Senegal international offers something different to Fernando Torres, he’s another option and more importantly, he’s been prolific at any club he’s been at. For £7 million, he’s good business for any side and the club that snaps him can count themselves lucky.

Not signing a striker in the summer transfer window, for me, played a massive part in Roberto di Matteo being sacked by Chelsea. Obviously, it’s results which got him sacked, but if he’d signed one or two strikers, rather than four attacking midfielders, then I think he’d still be at Stamford Bridge. If Torres is having a bad game, which is often, lets face it, then there is precious little scope to change the system and that played a large part in di Matteo’s downfall. If Ba, for example, had been signed in the summer, then I think the Italian would still be at Chelsea.

If it isn’t Ba, then who can Chelsea go for? Robert Lewandowski’s contract enters its final year this summer, so there’s an option, whilst Edinson Cavani and Radamel Falcao still haven’t been snapped up by any other sides. Chelsea have the funds, so why not go for one of them? Signing a player as expensive as Falcao or Cavani however, would mean they need to clear out a lot of dead wood, such as Florent Malouda, Paulo Ferreira and they’ve already done a little in that regard by selling Daniel Sturridge to Liverpool.

Clearing deadwood however, is much harder than it looks and if you have poor players on big contracts, it’s very hard to sell them for a fee. Look at Arsenal; they have average players on large wages and they can’t sell them. Marouana Chamah, Andrey Arshavin, Johan Djourou and Sebastian Squillaci are still at the club, while they can only get rid of Nicklas Bendtner and Denilson on loan.

With that in mind, it seems sensible that Chelsea scrap plans for Falcao and Cavani, and instead go back as serious contenders for Ba. You don’t get that quality for south of £10 million too often and they’d be foolish not to go for him.

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