Chelsea transfer news: Callum Hudson-Odoi set to stay with Chelsea for now as the real chess match begins

Callum Hudson-Odoi remains unmoved on the prospect of signing a new contract at Chelsea, though the Stamford Bridge club are hoping that first-team football in the business end of the season might be enough to persuade him to stay.

For a situation where Chelsea have very little leverage, they appear ready to try and convince him that his future lies in London with the reality that they would have to take less than the £35m on offer this month should they be forced to cash in on the England youth international in the summer.

And after going about it quite strongly before, it is fair to say that Bayern are now treading very carefully in their pursuit of Hudson-Odoi.

The teenager has handed in a transfer request at Stamford Bridge, he’s turned down a lucrative new contract and made clear that he wishes to leave for Munich, where he has reportedly been offered the number 10 shirt and a key role in the immediate future of one of the world’s biggest football clubs.

And while the club they call FC Hollywood ruffled some feathers in west London with technical director Hasan Salihamidzic’s comments earlier in the window about Hudson-Odoi – “We want to sign this player... we are in talks with Chelsea” – after Bayern’s 4-1 win over Stuttgart there was nobody willing to talk about the Chelsea youngster and certainly not manager Niko Kovac.

At that point, when Kovac was walking away from his post-match press conference, Hudson-Odoi was preparing for Chelsea’s FA Cup tie with Sheffield Wednesday. He was told that he would start the game well in advance as Maurizio Sarri tried to give the winger another taste of how first-team football would feel in London.

It is a start, and Hudson-Odoi scored for his troubles, but playing against a team 17th in the Championship won’t have quite the same impact on convincing the player to stay as it would giving him the nod in a game of more obvious significance.

In public, then, Bayern are silent. Behind the scenes they remain confident that they could secure a player they consider one of Europe’s best young attackers for just £35m, a fee which isn’t insignificant but remains affordable for a revenue machine like ‘the star of the south’, but might drop even further should a deal not be struck until the summer.

The view of Hudson-Odoi’s family and entourage is that Chelsea knew this was coming. When he signed his first professional deal at 16, Hudson-Odoi wanted a pipeline to the first team. With that not having truly materialised, certainly not on a consistent basis, they feel he is well within his rights to try and hold out for a better offer. Development comes first, not money.

Chelsea can try and convince Hudson-Odoi to remain with the club by making him a key part of the first XI for the rest of the campaign and convincing him that there is a plan.

It could go the way of Paul Pogba, who Sir Alex Ferguson blooded in the first team as United tried to tie him down to a new deal but still walked out to join Juventus.

Or it could go the direction it did for Arsenal with Reiss Nelson, or Liverpool with Rhian Brewster, where Bundesliga interest was shunned and a new contract was signed. In the case of Nelson, a year on loan will likely pave his path to the Arsenal starting XI. For Brewster, injuries have thrown a spanner into the works of his professional development.

Which way Hudson-Odoi’s situation goes is yet to be seen but he certainly has some intriguing options on the table – a big club or a bigger one. Lots of money or even more.

Development is the key in all of this, though, and not just the young winger’s.

For this is now a high-profile test case to see whether Chelsea can develop their reputation quickly enough from a team with no pipeline from academy to first team into an outfit that promotes and improves players from within.

That might be worth more to them in the long run than the value of a teenage winger, no matter how good he is.