Chelsea agree deal with Palace for Lacroix

Chelsea have agreed a deal with Crystal Palace to sign Maxence Lacroix.

The 26-year-old defender has given permission to finalise the transfer. Palace were seeking around £55m in negotiations given the fee Tottenham paid for Jan Paul van Hecke from Brighton.

Sky Sports News understands Chelsea have given Palace the chance to discuss signing one of their defenders available for transfer during talks.

• Why do Chelsea want to sign Lacroix from Palace?
• Transfer Centre LIVE! | Chelsea news & transfers🔵
• Got Sky? Watch Chelsea games LIVE on your phone📱
• Not got Sky? Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW📺
• Choose the Sky Sports push notifications you want! 🔔

There has been interest from other clubs in Axel Disasi, Trevoh Chalobah and Benoit Badiashile.

Palace and Chelsea have a good relationship and they have done deals for players such as Chalobah and Ben Chilwell in the past.

The Eagles have been concentrating on Augsburg centre-back Chrislain Matsima. However, Sky Sports News understands they are now prepared to walk away from the deal, having become frustrated with the speed of negotiations.

Palace have been interested in several centre-backs since the January window when Marc Guehi was sold to Manchester City.

Among those have been Toulouse's Charlie Cresswell, Lyon's Ruben Kluivert and Trabzonspor's Chibuke Nwaiwu, who is also of interest to Fulham.

Chelsea's key summer business so far

In

Geovany Quenda - Sporting, £43.5m

Marco Palestra - Atalanta, £43m

Denner - Corinthians, £8.7m

Dastan Satpaev - Kairat Almaty, £2.1m

Emmanuel Emegha - Strasbourg, undisclosed

Morgan Rogers - Aston Villa, £117m

Out

Marc Cucurella - Real Madrid, £51.8m

Andrey Santos - Man Utd, £50m

Tyrique George - Everton, £24m

Jimmy-Jay Morgan - West Brom, £4m