Chelsea's Antonio Conte Renews Contract and Looks to January Transfer Market

In his first season as coach of Chelsea, Italian manager Antonio Conte became the champion in England and has now renewed his contract with the London team until June 2021. However, the transfer market did not go as expected for him. Several of his goals were not met, such as Antonio Candreva, Alex Sandro, Virgilio van Dijk, Ross Barkley, Andrea Belotti, or Romelu Lukaku.

Now, Antonio Conte hopes that the situation will be different for the January 2018 transfer market. Currently third in the league, a staggering 11 points behind the leader Manchester City, the manager of Stamford Bridge stated a few hours ago, "We need to make good signings in the January market if we want to compete with Manchester City. They reinforced well in the summer and they might do it again in January. We should be worried."

Obviously, these words, which we reported on yesterday, have caused a good number of possible signings to be named. Linked during the summer, the names of Alex Sandro (Juventus) and Ross Barkley (Everton) remain on the radar. Another profile being sought is that of a central defender, where according to the Daily Mail, Mouctar Diakhaby (Olympique de Lyon) is one of the players to watch. In attack, the options are Lucas Moura (Paris Saint Germain) and Christian Benteke (Crystal Palace).

There is no doubt that, apart from the work on the contract renewals for Belgian duo Eden Hazard (contract until 2020) and Thibaut Courtois (2017), Chelsea plans to make a splash in the upcoming winter transfer market opening in January.