Chelsea ready to approach Tottenham over Fernando Llorente

Antonio Conte wants to go back in for Tottenham’s Fernando Llorente, to finally solve Chelsea’s striking problem in this window.

The Italian wanted to bring in his former Juventus player in the summer as back-up for Alvaro Morata, only for Spurs to hijack the move late on and get the Spanish international for a £12m deal. That has come back to bite Chelsea as Morata is currently suffering a bit of a drought and back-up Michy Batshuayi still hasn’t adapted to the manager’s system well enough to regularly start. The Belgian will be sent on loan if Conte can bring in another option.

The Italian thereby wants to test how willing Chelsea’s London rivals would be to keep the striker. West Ham United’s Andy Carroll is another player who has been looked at, but Llorente would be cheaper, and there is another reason why Conte wants him.

Aside from knowing and trusting the 32-year-old from Juventus, the Chelsea boss thinks Llorente could be crucial to helping Morata through some of the slumps he has already suffered in a stop-start first season in England. Llorente mentored his younger compatriot before when both played in Turin, but Conte feels that will be more pronounced now.

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Morata has in private talked about his ongoing efforts to adapt to the physicality of England, and that is something that Llorente did actually struggle with on first signing for Swansea City in 2016-17, before successfully adjusting and then hitting supreme form for his goals to help keep the Welsh club up.

Llorente would also provide an alternative tactical option since he can both play instead of Morata and with him in a two.

Whether Spurs would be willing to sell is another issue, especially since Mauricio Pochettino has been such a vocal admirer of Llorente’s style and influence on his squad.

Spurs have always proven reluctant to do business with Chelsea in recent years.