The thing that Jhon Duran and Michael Olise transfers now have in common

What do the Michael Olise and Jhon Duran transfers have in common?

Well, if you believe the insiders, the answer is that Chelsea want to include players as part exchange in both cases.

CaughtOffside today reported that our interest in Olise sees us “considering offering two players” to Crystal Palace. There have been similar stories around Duran.

As recently as this morning, Fabrizio Romano was insisting that our aim in getting the Aston Villa striker in was to also offload some players in the other directions. Villa have expressed interest in Conor Gallagher, while we are pushing Ian Maatsen, riding a high of transfer value after a strong 6 months at Borussia Dortmund.

Swap deals are notoriously hard to pull off, and have faded almost entirely out of the game at the very top level. There’s so much money involved, and so much accountancy, that teams prefer to treat each deal as separate, even if they are each sending one to the other.

FFP and PSR wizardry likely behind the decisions

All of this beg the question of why Chelsea might want to include players, rather than simply selling those same players and using the money raised to buy the ones they want.

The answer is likely to be related to the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP). The realities of this are endlessly complex, and teams of lawyers spend the whole year battling back and forth over it.

But it seems clear from these clues that swapping players rather than buying and selling them is an advantageous move for Chelsea in the position they’re in at the moment, and it will be very interesting to see if that plays out in a move this summer. It could well be that Villa or Palace are in a similar situation, and may be more open to the concept than normal.