Big week at Chelsea with stars set to return for pre-season including £97.5m star

A number of Chelsea’s first-team players are set to return for pre-season this week including want-away striker Romelu Lukaku.

The Belgian is reported to be willing to lose almost £1million just to seal a permanent move to Inter Milan who have seen their first bid for the striker knocked down by the Blues with an asking price of £40million. Chelsea are determined to at least recoup a significant amount of the £97.5million they paid for him a couple of seasons ago.

The past week has been pure hard work with a number of internationals returning including England trio, Raheem Sterling, Reece James and Ben Chilwell.

Evergreen Thiago Silva and Marc Cucurella who was in June linked with an exit from the club have all been back at Chelsea’s Surrey training centre looking to sharpen their skills ahead of the trip to the United States where they have been scheduled to play across five cities.

Returning from loans, Bashir Humphreys, Ian Maatsen and Cesare Casadei, have all been seen training with the first team while Callum Hudson-Odoi who is looking to exit the club has also been back even though sources say he was doing some gym work for most of the time he was there last week.

With the exception of Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke and Levi Colwill who took part in the European under -21 Championship, most of the players are now excepted back at Cobham which includes the likes of Enzo Fernández, Kepa Arrizabalaga and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

Chelsea have sold a number of the stars that helped the club win their second Champions League trophy just two years ago including midfielder Mateo Kovacic and German forward Kai Havertz. 2018 World Cup winner N’Golo Kante has also joined Al-Ittihad while goalkeeper Edouard Mendy has left for Al Ahli.

Those who have come in so far include Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku while talks continue behind the scenes for Brighton and Hove’s Moisés Caicedo.