{"id":715032,"date":"2026-07-28T08:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T08:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715032\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T08:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T08:37:11","slug":"chelsea-transfer-news-henderson-welbeck-lacroix-why-do-blues-want-older-players-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715032\/","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea transfer news: Henderson, Welbeck, Lacroix – why do Blues want older players now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Owner Behdad Eghbali said Chelsea<\/a> would “tweak” their model and add experience to what he still believes is a strong core of young players, including Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo and Levi Colwill.<\/p>\n

Welbeck joining Chelsea<\/a> would be another sign of a shift in strategy.<\/p>\n

Their move for him follows attempts to sign 33-year-old midfielder Granit Xhaka from Sunderland<\/a>, with the Black Cats refusing to sell the Switzerland captain.<\/p>\n

Although the arrival of Rogers, 23, fits the club’s preferred policy of signing younger players, he brings significant Premier League experience.<\/p>\n

The Blues are also expected to complete a \u00a352m move for Lacroix, 26 – further Premier League-ready experience.<\/p>\n

It is clear that Welbeck’s arrival would leave Chelsea<\/a> with an abundance of attacking options for a season when they are not involved in European competition so do not necessarily need such resources.<\/p>\n

At his age, Welbeck may be content to provide cover for Joao Pedro, but the move would represent bad news for several other forwards.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Jackson is open to leaving, while Delap and Emmanuel Emegha had hoped to establish themselves under Alonso.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Chelsea<\/a> manager is getting what he wants: experience and strong personalities to address shortcomings that contributed to the team’s 10th-place finish in the Premier League last season.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Matt Jones<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Owner Behdad Eghbali said Chelsea would “tweak” their model and add experience to what he still believes is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-715032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}