Exclusive: Chelsea had interest in £100m+ pair rejected this month

Chelsea have made a habit of raiding Brighton for their top talents in the last few years, from Marc Cucurella and Graham Potter to Moises Caicedo and Robert Sanchez.

Not all of those moves were a success, but there’s no questioning the absurd eye for talent that the Seagulls have, even after Chelsea tried to poach all their best recruitment staff. Two players now shining for the upwardly mobile South Coast club are attracting lots of attention from the Blues, and one can understand why.

Our writer Simon Phillips has revealed on his Substack today that the Blues have their eyes on Caicedo’s replacement in the Brighton midfield, Carlos Baleba, as well as their versatile attacker Georginio Rutter.

He says that approaches for both this January have been rebuffed. Brighton will sell eventually, but only on their terms, and these two new additions aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Chelsea would need scary amount of money to buy Brighton pair

At 21 and 22 years old, with solid Premier League experience under their belts and plenty of potential still to be reached, these are prime players who will be reaching their absolute peak of value.

It boggles the mind thinking about how much Brighton will end making someone pay for Baleba in particular. He looks close to a world class player already, and given they got more than £115m for Caicedo, one can only imagine they will want similar numbers for the Cameroonian.

This is what Chelsea want to get away from – they want to be buying these guys before their price quintuples at Brighton, not after. But either on the scouting or the development side, we’re just not finding or improving players like they are.