Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel admits the longer the club's sale takes to complete the less time they will have to act in the summer market.
Not only do Chelsea hope to strengthen in order to close the gap to Manchester City and Liverpool at the top of the Premier League, they must also replace those leaving south-west London and Tuchel is aware that makes the coming months particularly tough to navigate successfully.
"It can be complex enough if you lose a player like Toni (Rudiger) and maybe lose another player like Andreas (Christensen) with their quality and both of them for free," explained the boss.
"It's demanding enough nowadays in football to lose this kind of quality in a back three even if everything else stays in place so it can be a very demanding summer.
"I want to be positive about it and want to speak about the things we can influence. It will not be easy because we wanted to compete [for the league title] and you could see that we could not over the long run. We can compete in periods and in direct matches.
"The key thing for me is we keep the mentality in the building and in the club, the competitive mentality that was installed over a decade, and hopefully we can find our way through."
Finding clarity quickly is important so that the start to 2022/23 is not hampered and Tuchel is confident that they can catch up on two lost months so long as a resolution to the ownership situation is found soon.
"I don't want to write it [the summer transfer window] off right now because it's only April and it's too early," he added. "We still have faith in the people who take care about it from our side on the board. We need to finish it as fast as possible and we try to be prepared behind the scenes to do our job.
"At the moment, it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen but if we have the green light to act then we are prepared and will share our views on the team."
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