Arsenal and Spurs urged to raid Chelsea as pressure mounts on Marina Granovskaia to sell

Lukaku returning to Chelsea 'to prove people wrong'

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Chelsea transfer supremo Marina Granovskaia is under pressure to sell players to offset the outlay for a big name addition at Stamford Bridge. And London rivals Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are the clubs best placed to take advantage, according to former Crystal Palace chief Simon Jordan.

Thomas Tuchel is set to welcome Romelu Lukaku to Stamford Bridge this week, with the Inter Milan forward expected to complete his Chelsea return in a deal worth a reported £97.5million.

But the arrival of Lukaku will put even more pressure on Roman Abramovich’s right-hand woman and Chelsea transfer chief Granovskaia to offload some of the squad players.

Tammy Abraham is one such player likely to be a step closer to the exit door following Lukaku’s arrival.

The 23-year-old has struggled for regular game time at Chelsea, and has been heavily linked with a move away from west London this summer.

And football expert and former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan believes that the striker would be a perfect fit for two other major London clubs.

“I’m surprised. You look at Tammy Abraham and a lot of players get better the more they don’t play in people’s eyes, because ‘him not playing is the reason we didn’t do that’,” Jordan told talkSPORT.

“Tammy Abraham in my view gets worse the less he plays, because people’s perception is ‘why isn’t he playing?’. He’s a good player. He scores pretty much one in two in every format that he plays in, maybe just slightly a bit less than that.

“I think he can play, if he’s loved and looked after, and put into a team that affords him the opportunity to be regularly playing, I think he’ll get a lot of goals.

“So the question for me is, at £34m, why aren’t Arsenal or Tottenham wanting to buy a player like this? He is a goalscorer and he’s a very technically gifted player as well.”

However, both London clubs will have their work cut out if they are to agree to a deal with Abraham, with talks already reported to be advanced between Chelsea and AS Roma for the forward.

With Abraham on the way out, Chelsea boss Tuchel has spoken of his new star striker, heralding Lukaku as one of the best forwards in the game.

The Chelsea boss said: “Romelu is one of the guys like [Erling] Haaland at Dortmund, [Robert] Lewandowski at Bayern Munich, Harry Kane at Tottenham, who is a real No9 who loves to score and who has a presence in the box.

“That is not a secret. The sentence is easy to repeat for any coach in the world.

“He is the kind of profile we’re looking for, and if it is possible to convince agents and clubs, we will do our best.”

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Chelsea will start the new Premier League season with a home game against Crystal Palace on Saturday, which is followed by a tough opening run of matches.

Tuchel’s side face two more London derbies early in the campaign, Arsenal away on the second weekend and Spurs away in mid-September, with fixtures against Liverpool, Aston Villa and Manchester City also coming in the opening six rounds of the season.
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