Fikayo Tomori in action for Chelsea. (GETTY Images)
Speaking to Coral (h/t Metro), Former Chelsea boss Frank Lampard has explained why he offloaded starlet Fikayo Tomori to AC Milan last season.
The Blues legend was appointed as Chelsea manager in the summer of 2019, but the club was handed a transfer ban earlier that year, disallowing them to bring in players in the summer transfer window.
Lampard then put his faith in the youth of the club and brought in the likes of Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Billy Gilmour into the first-team setup. However, one youngster that was allowed to leave by Lampard before being sacked was Tomori.
The young Englishman featured 22 times across all competitions in the 2019/20 season for his boyhood club. However, in the summer of 2020, Lampard brought in Thiago Silva from PSG while the club already possessed Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen, and Kurt Zouma.
Understandably game-time dried up for the 23-year-old last season, and he only made 4 appearances until January. He then sought a move to AC Milan, just a couple of weeks before the Blues sacked Lampard in the job.
Lampard has now come out and explained why he had to sell the youngster, who also played with him at Derby County. The Chelsea legend told Coral (h/t Metro):
‘Fikayo was immense at Derby, growing into the season and getting better every week. It was a difficult story in the end because we had too many centre-halves in the end in the second year at Chelsea, and I really wanted to help him, but I’m not sure he really understood that.’
Tomori’s move to AC Milan was made permanent earlier this summer, and the London outfit earned £25million out of that sale. With no buy-back clause existing in his contract as per journalist Fabrizio Romano, the Stamford Bridge club would be hoping that they do not regret their decision of selling the starlet.
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