Thomas Tuchel claims that Chelsea is prepared to thwart West Ham’s £30 million offer for their promising striker Armando Broja.
A transfer offer from Frank Lampard’s Everton was also received, but the 20-year-old is still in Las Vegas with his parent club ahead of a match against Club America. This is despite the player receiving intense transfer interest.
Despite interest from other clubs like Newcastle, Napoli, and AC Milan, the Hammers seem to be in the lead.
Tuchel has stated that Chelsea doesn’t want to sell their Albanian international and has urged him to perform well in the United States ahead of the first preseason game on Saturday night.
“Armando is our player first of all and we have, at the moment, no interest in selling him,” Tuchel told reporters. “He is here to make an impression after he was on loan in Southampton.
“That’s his situation from where we look up front. It’s good if there’s interest as it shows us there’s talent and potential. It shows us that he is in the position to impress and become a Chelsea player.
“When will he become a Chelsea player? No one knows but hopefully as soon as possible. He got injured and there’s a delay for him which is never nice because a young player should normally make an impression from the first minute in pre-season. Now we have a bit of a delay in that but that’s the situation.
He will, however, be unable to play in the upcoming game at Allegiant Stadium due to an Achilles injury. After the session, he was spotted in Los Angeles wearing a protective boot, but Tuchel explained that it was mostly out of caution because he had escaped serious injury.
“He had a like a little accident yesterday in training with the ball control and landed funnily on his ankle and Achilles,” he added. “He is in pain but nothing is injured – we did the examinations. He is lucky that he did not get injured.
