Broja set to miss months but Chelsea 'do not currently anticipate' recall — reports

Yesterday at 04:12 PM

Complicated complications

There was brief hope that Armando Broja's ankle injury was not as bad as initially feared but it looks like the 23-year-old will just about miss the rest of the season after all, as he's expected to be out for 10-12 weeks according to the latest word from Everton.

"We think he's going to be out for somewhere between 10-12 weeks. It's his ankle ligaments. It'll probably mean there's a possibility that he will have to go back to Chelsea."

-David Moyes; source: The Athletic

That brief statement is perhaps more notable for the interesting bit of phrasing from Moyes about what might happen next, behind which are multiple layers of complications.

Broja has hardly played all season, having had to deal with an Achilles issue. Now he's out for practically the rest of the season. Surely, there's just about zero chance that Everton exercise their buy-option in his loan contract.

Our loanees almost always return to Chelsea in these sorts of situations, but in this particular case, the question of Broja's wages is muddying up the situation. It would appear that while we're happy to have him back to Cobham to recover as usual, as per The Telegraph, we don't actually want to cut the loan short — i.e. we want Everton to keep paying his wages. (And if Broja does recover early, we also don't have a spot for him.)

Further complicating this situation is that Everton are out of loan spots, so they would need to get Broja off their books to make any new temporary signings. We might not care too much about that, but the Toffees have been linked recently with the likes of Carney Chukwuemeka and Ben Chilwell, so perhaps we should.