Chelsea receive Kobbie Mainoo transfer confirmation

Enzo Maresca has been told that Manchester United midfielder Kobbie Mainoo could “quite easily” join Chelsea next year.

The 20-year-old has fallen down the pecking order under Ruben Amorim this season and he is still yet to start a single Premier League match since the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign.

Mainoo has only racked up 273 minutes of action across all competitions this term and he has been widely tipped to leave Old Trafford in January, with his boyhood club eager to sign Nottingham Forest star Elliot Anderson as his replacement.

Chelsea have been heavily linked with a move for the England midfielder throughout 2025, and Man Utd legends Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt have confirmed that Mainoo should consider a move to Stamford Bridge next year.

Kobbie Mainoo to Chelsea?

“If Mainoo was playing for another Premier League club, United would go and buy him for £70m or £80m. Now we’re going to sell him and he’ll be a superstar elsewhere like [Scott] McTominay, [Anthony] Elanga, [Dean] Henderson – we can mention loads of them,” Butt told The Good, The Bad & The Football Podcast.

“We’re getting rid of players who love the football club, it’s mind-boggling. I get the [Alejandro] Garnacho one because his attitude and behaviour was terrible but you don’t hear that about Kobbie.

“He’s a top, top, top player that we are f****** up. Kobbie has got to go. If I’m looking after him I’m telling him: ‘We’re getting you out of that football club.’

“For his football career he has to leave United, he’s lost 18 months of development. I hope he goes abroad because it’s embarrassing if he goes to Chelsea, which could happen.

“They might go and get him because they are putting together a very good, young squad and keep buying young players. He could quite easily end up at Chelsea next season.

“I’ve known Kobbie since he was eight but you wouldn’t be doing him justice if you told him to stay and not to take that move. That’s such a sad thing for me to say.”

Scholes added: “Do you know what? You’d have to advise him to go [to Chelsea], wouldn’t you? If he rang me and said: ‘Look, Chelsea are interested, what do you think?’ I’d say go all day long.”

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