Sources : Enzo Fernandez deal, Jorge Mendes pushing for move to England, proposal made.

Sources have told ChelseaFC365 that Chelsea have discussed personal terms with Enzo Fernandez with a view to a potential move to the club whilst super agent Jorge Mendes tries to push a move through to England.

Further to this, a Chelsea insider told ChelseaFC365 that the club made a proposal on the day of the match against Bournemouth, but it was “Nowhere near” the release clause.

Now, here is where it gets difficult because currently, Sources tell ChelseaFC365 that the club do not want to trigger the release clause of Enzo Fernandez, which adds up to the information the Chelsea insider told us about the club making a proposal outside of his release clause.

The situation is further complicated due to the fact that Benfica are thought to be publicly at least denying any situation where an agreement could be reached for figures not related to his release clause.

Of course, if you were going to trigger a release clause then you would want to make sure the player wanted the move, hence perhaps the talks around the personal terms but speaking to a number of individuals and as Fabrizio Romano reported, Chelsea are wary of potential FFP issues should they decide to act and trigger the clause.

To give you a better understanding on why Chelsea would like to pay more than his release clause, essentially if Chelsea were to pay for example 120 million pounds, they could structure the deal in a way where the club could again for example, make payments towards the deal every year, eventually reaching the total agreed figure. However, triggering a release clause which in this case is 105 million pounds, it means that it is straight up, full cash, therefore losing all of that money instantly to Benfica thus looking worse on the financial books of the club.

Chelsea have other options should a deal not materialise, we reported last summer that James Ward Prowse was a name on the list and with Joe Shields coming in, it will be interesting to see if this one advances at all but I do expect Chelsea to avoid this type of buy and go for the likes of Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice, Moises Caicedo, Frenkie De Jong or Kouadio Kone, who ChelseaFC365 understands has been recommended by the scouting team.