3 Sound Investments for Chelsea to Make this season

#2 Daniele Rugani

Daniele Rugani at a Juventus Training Session

Daniele Rugani is an Italian defender who plies his trade for Juventus. He started his professional career with Juventus in 2013 after impressing on a loan spell in Turin. He did not get a look-in initially and was loaned out to Empoli.

At Empoli, Rugani worked under Sarri and established himself as one of the club’s most important players. He played a stellar role in Empoli gaining promotion to the Serie A. He played every minute of the 2014-15 season, contributed 3 goals and did not get booked.

Rugani is an elegant and classy defender and relies on his game reading to snuff out attacks, rather than going to ground. However, this was also one of the primary reasons why Rugani couldn’t nail down a spot in Juventus’ starting eleven. Though he made only 0.8 tackles per game over the course of the 2017-18 season, he was on hand to clear the danger 3.7 times per game.

In addition to this, he is a very accomplished passer of the football. In the previous season, he averaged 68.5 passes per game with an accuracy of 91%. Sarri likes his teams to play out from the back and in Rugani he would have a defender adroit enough to implement that philosophy.

Signing Rugani would also lay the foundation for a solid central defensive pairing between Christensen and Rugani. At 22 and 23 years respectively, they can be the rock on which Chelsea can build their new empire.

With David Luiz on the wane and Gary Cahill not getting any younger, the time is right for Chelsea to go all out and invest in Rugani.