Chelsea have scouted Atletico Madrid centre-back Jose Gimenez as Frank Lampard looks to bolster his defensive options for next season, claims The Daily Telegraph.
The Premier League outfit have already signed Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech this summer and now a deal is in the works for Bayer Leverkusen's Kai Havertz.
While Chelsea are assembling a formidable attacking unit, their defence is poor and will need urgent improvement if they are to close the gap on Premier League champions Liverpool.
Chelsea have conceded more goals (54) than 16th-place Brighton in the Premier League this season after letting in five against Liverpool on Wednesday night.
Lampard wants to sign a new centre-back this summer, and has earmarked Atletico's Gimenez as a potential target, but will need to offload at least one defender first.
Chelsea currently have Kurt Zouma, Andreas Christensen, Antonio Rudiger and Fikayo Tomori at the club, though the latter is expected to leave on loan next season.
Gimenez has spent the last seven years at Atletico and formed one of Europe's best centre-back partnerships alongside Diego Godin for several years until the latter joined Inter last summer.
The Uruguay international has been limited to just 21 league appearances for Atletico this season due to injury.
While convincing Gimenez to leave Atletico may prove problematic, trying to agree with Atletico could make this deal a non-starter for the Blues.
Gimenez has a £109m release clause in his current Atletico deal and three years left to run on his contract Diego Simeone's sid are in no rush to sell.
Unsurprisingly, Atletico had a better win ratio in LaLiga this season when Gimenez started (57.9%) compared to when he didn't feature from the off (36.8%).
Atletico only lost one league game Gimenez started in 2019/20 compared to three defeats in the 19 matches he did not.
