What Chelsea's new man Tosin Adarabioyo learned at Manchester ...

Tosin Adarabioyo was not short of suitors this summer. When it became clear that he would not renew his contract with Fulham, interest emerged across Europe.

For a time, Newcastle United appeared to be in pole position. They held a long-standing interest in Tosin, dating back to Fulham’s Championship-winning campaign in 2021-22. He was seen as an excellent homegrown option, with Eddie Howe eager to reinforce his back line. They made an offer and talks progressed well. According to sources with knowledge of the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity like all of those consulted for this piece to protect relationships, he appreciated the project.

Manchester United are understood to have also made a late offer to the player’s camp but Tosin’s mind was already made up on joining another west London club — the defender joined Fulham’s rivals Chelsea on Friday.

It took some time for Chelsea to get their man. The club registered their interest early but there was not a great deal of confidence anything would come of it at first. As they were distracted looking for a new head coach following Mauricio Pochettino’s departure after the end of the season, the deal was regarded as ‘dead’ within the club. That was still the case at the beginning of last week. However, their pessimism was misplaced.

Throughout the final year of his Fulham contract, Tosin, 26, had kept his options open and, in the end, it was Chelsea’s offer that would prove persuasive. They offered Tosin European football and the chance to remain in London, where he has spent the past four years with Fulham.

Negotiations stepped up once Enzo Maresca, the former assistant of Pep Guardiola and a former under-23 coach at Manchester City, was chosen as Pochettino’s replacement. While it took another week for the appointment to be officially announced, it gave Chelsea a stronger pitch.

The new coach at Chelsea added to an appealing picture for the former City academy graduate Tosin. He and Maresca crossed paths only briefly at City; Maresca was appointed as the elite development squad coach in August 2020, just as Tosin was preparing to leave the club in October. Joe Shields, who worked with Tosin at City’s academy in his younger years, was another City link.

Tosin’s on-ball credentials made him a perfect fit. Maresca, who was consulted about the signing, wants to build out from the back and that style relies on defenders who are comfortable in possession.

For Tosin, the move is aimed at helping him step back up the ladder, four years after he left Manchester City. It is, according to those with knowledge of the negotiations, felt to be the right time for him to return to a top club. He has never shied away from his ambitions to play at the highest level. “My target is not just to get into the Premier League, it is be playing at the highest level, competing for trophies, playing Champions League football,” he told The Athletic in 2021.

Tosin’s move to Fulham in October 2020 was designed to get his progress back on track. It ended an 18-year association with City, which began as a five-year-old after watching an older age-group tournament at Whalley Range High School. “Tosin turned up and was looking through the fence one day, watching it and asked: ‘Can I play?’,” Terry John, who first signed Tosin for City and worked with him in his early years, told The Athletic in 2020. “So we got him involved and that’s how it started.”

Tosin’s self-belief helped navigate the youth levels at City. He has two older brothers, Gbolahan (six years senior) and Fisayo (three years senior), and he regularly held his own against them. “He was playing football with my mates who were even older than me, where he didn’t have a chance of touching the ball,” said Gbolahan in 2020. “But he got used to the challenge.”

He was tall and played in higher age groups. At 14, he was 6ft 1in (185cm) and featured for City’s under-18s. At 16, he stepped into first-team training, where he would play in 11-v-11 sessions against Carlos Tevez and Vincent Kompany. “It was just another game for me,” Tosin told The Athletic. “I was trying my hardest to impress Roberto Mancini.”

That drive would be needed to break into the first team, as City went on to spend half a billion pounds on defenders since his first training session with the seniors. He made his debut, ironically, at Stamford Bridge, in February 2016 at the age of 18.

After making three appearances for the club in the 2016-17 season, including two in the Champions League, he signed a contract extension, but opportunities were limited. He would make four more appearances in 12 months then went on loan, first to West Bromwich Albion, then to Blackburn Rovers under Tony Mowbray. There, his focus was working on the defensive aspects of his game.

“The reason we brought him in was because of his attributes. He’s 6ft 5in, he’s very, very quick, his distribution is as good as any centre-back in the division,” Mowbray told The Athletic in 2020. “All we had to do was work throughout the year trying to make him realise the defensive side was the most important side of his game.

“He grew into heading the ball out the box and dealing with the first ball down the middle, the essential side of being a defender, as opposed to the aesthetic side.”

City would discuss with Mowbray and Blackburn about moving his feet and adjusting his position and body shape quickly, and his determination to learn quickly led Mowbray to believe he would become a Premier League footballer.

“I had a conversation with him at the end of the season, and he enjoyed those aspects that we tried to put into him,” he said. “He had to be a defender first and not just aesthetically great with the ball, passing through lines.”

Tosin performed strongly and had hoped for a recall in January 2020 as City suffered an injury crisis in central defence, with Fernandinho filling in after Aymeric Laporte suffered a knee injury. But that did not come to pass, a decision that made it clear to Tosin that it was time to leave City. He turned down a new contract that month, and later joined Fulham on deadline day in October 2020, for £1.5million, rising to £2m with add-ons.

That would prove to be exceptional value for Fulham, making 132 appearances. In his first season under Scott Parker, the club were relegated but Tosin was a standout performer. Under Marco Silva, he was integral to the team’s success. “The way he can defend the box, but also on the ball, he is a special player, the way I want to play, the way he can build (from the back),” Silva said last year.

Silva likes his central defenders to begin the team’s attacking build-up and Tosin’s ability to drive forward from defence and play a line-breaking pass made him important. This was particularly noteworthy during Fulham’s Championship-winning season, where they adopted a City-style approach.

The data covering the past two seasons also reflects this. We can visualise Tosin’s numbers using a Smarterscout pizza chart, which uses advanced analytics to break down elements of a footballer’s game in different performance, skill and style metrics, and weights those values against their positional peers.

In the 2022-23 season, Tosin ranked strongly for progressive passes (the green spike below).

And in 2023-24, his carry and dribble volume (another green spike below) took precedence, a likely consequence of how Fulham’s build-up play adjusted following the departure of Aleksandar Mitrovic.

While his on-ball qualities were part of his football schooling, his defensive qualities have improved.

His height allowed him to compete effectively in both boxes, especially from set pieces. That is reflected by his aerial win percentage of 67.1.

That aerial ability appealed greatly to Chelsea, according to club sources. The squad does not have many players who can provide a big presence in the penalty area. It is one of the reasons former head coach Pochettino regularly selected Levi Colwill at left-back even though he is renowned as one of England’s best young centre-backs.

Tosin’s familiarity with a high defensive line — from his time at City and more recently under Silva — also appealed.

Tosin’s final campaign at Fulham began with a groin injury that required surgery but he reached some of his best performance levels during their upturn in form over the winter. His loss will be felt on the field, even if supporters will not take kindly to him joining their local rivals.

He formed an excellent partnership with Tim Ream at Fulham and then Calvin Bassey, Ream’s long-term replacement.

Tosin’s departure was forecast. Talks broke down last summer after he rejected a new deal and, amid interest from West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur, he was subject to two bids from Monaco, worth in the region of €7m (£5.9m; $7.6m) plus add-ons and then €10million. These were turned down, as Fulham could not find a replacement.

Silva wanted to retain him and as he hit form, the club rekindled negotiations during the season, but he turned down their new proposal and informed the club he would not be renewing in April. Sources with knowledge of the negotiations say his exit was not to do with wanting a better offer, but the sense that now was the time to take that next step at a bigger club.

Tosin has shown throughout his career that he is not afraid to back himself and wants to compete at the highest level. On the international stage, he represented England from under-16s to under-19s and is eligible for Nigeria, but has said he is focusing on club football.

Tosin will become the oldest player to join Chelsea for two years, when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, then 33, arrived from Barcelona. Since the 2023 January transfer window, they have signed players aged 25 and under. Tosin turns 27 in September. With Thiago Silva departing, there will be scope to make an impression as Chelsea try to build on last season’s strong finish and embark on a new era under Maresca.

(Top photo: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)