BANGKOK-Chelsea man­ag­er An­dre Vi­las Boas says the club is some way off agree­ing per­son­al terms with de­fen­sive mid­field­er Ori­ol Romeu, hav­ing struck a trans­fer deal with his club, Barcelona. Vi­las Boas said the 19-year-old was one of the most promis­ing play­ers in the world in the hold­ing mid­field role-an area Chelsea needs to strength­en due to the long-term in­jury to Michael Essien. "We are strug­gling with num­bers," Vi­las Boas said Sat­ur­day. "It's not on­ly that Michael Essien has an in­jury but we would like to bring in play­ers in those po­si­tions. "Ori­ol went through an in­jury last sea­son but came back right on time to play for the first team. He is one of the most in­ter­est­ing bright young play­ers for the No 6 po­si­tion, as we like to call it."

Romeu is in Colom­bia for the un­der-20 World Cup, mean­ing there will be some de­lay to com­plet­ing the trans­fer. Re­ports had put the val­ue of the trans­fer at five mil­lions eu­ros ($7.1m). "I hope we can have the agree­ment on the per­son­al terms with the play­er and hope he will pass the med­ical," Vi­las Boas said. Romeu made one league ap­pear­ance for Barcelona last sea­son, with op­por­tu­ni­ties at a pre­mi­um giv­en the depth and qual­i­ty of play­ers at the reign­ing Eu­ro­pean cham­pi­ons. How­ev­er, he played a key role in tak­ing Barcelona's B team to its best ever league fin­ish, third, in Spain's sec­ond tier. Vi­las Boas was speak­ing from Bangkok, where Chelsea was prepar­ing for a friend­ly to­day.