Chelsea have reached a verbal agreement to sign Joao Felix from Atlético Madrid on loan for the remainder of the season

Blues are will­ing to pay the strik­er’s €11million price offer from Atleti­co Madrid.

In addi­tion, man­ag­er Gra­ham Pot­ter has said he will pay the Por­tuguese play­er his full wages for the remain­der of the season.

Felix, 23, was des­per­ate to leave Atléti­co after falling out with man­ag­er Diego Sime­one in the Jan­u­ary trans­fer window.

Accord­ing to The Ath­let­ic, Chelsea have won the race to sign him.

Felix turned down inter­est in him from Man­ches­ter Unit­ed and Arse­nal, say­ing he was “attract­ed to the Chelsea project”.

He has already told friends he is leav­ing for Eng­land, accord­ing to the Dai­ly Record.

Chelsea want to include a pur­chase option in the rental deal.

But Atléti­co may have been wait­ing for a bet­ter offer.

The Red Dev­ils were report­ed­ly plan­ning to pay Felix an ini­tial €10.5m rental fee, plus €80m after the season.

Mean­while, Arse­nal are explor­ing options up front fol­low­ing the injury of Gabriel Jesus.

Felix joins for­mer Molde strik­er David Datro Fofana, who is set to move to Chelsea this month.

And the Blues are said to be on the verge of sign­ing anoth­er attack­ing play­er before the deadline.

Both Chelsea and the Gun­ners are inter­est­ed in Shakhtar Donet­sk star Mikhail Mudrik.

But nei­ther appears to be will­ing to pay the €100 mil­lion Ukrain­ian demands.

Since Pot­ter took charge, the Blues have scored just 12 goals in 11 Pre­mier­ship appearances.

xG, Shoot On Tar­get and Shoot Attempts are among the worst in the Pre­mier League in Pot­ter’s last 11 games.

Chelsea have already spent an esti­mat­ed €340m on sign­ings since Todd Bai­ley bought the club last year.

In addi­tion to Fofana and Felix, he also signed Benoît Badi­asir from Mona­co ear­li­er this month for €40m.

After yes­ter­day’s 4–0 defeat to Man­ches­ter City, Pot­ter vowed that the team must “unite”.

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