'More about accounting than football'

"It's a chance for me to find a home," Joao Felix said when unveiled in his first Chelsea interview, adding: "After two loans, Chelsea and Barca, I needed to stay permanently in one place."

In the 2022-23 season, he started at Atletico Madrid but got a mid-season loan to Chelsea. The Blues didn't make his loan permanent, leading to a season on loan at Barcelona. Now, after six more months on a permanent deal at Chelsea, Felix has joined AC Milan on loan.

Lurching from superclub to superclub is a strange existence for a player who cost Atletico Madrid £113m and cost Chelsea £45m in the summer, when he was given a seven-year deal.

Simply, at Chelsea, he has not been good enough to unseat star man Cole Palmer in his favoured number 10 position.

His deal never felt needed for Chelsea given Palmer and Christopher Nkunku were there to play his role.

But the deal seems to have been engineered so Conor Gallagher could join Atletico Madrid for £34m, helping improve the club's PSR position and while he was in the last year of his contract.

It now looks like the deal that saw Felix join Chelsea was more about accounting than football.