The Athletic’s whole business model is based on having top local reporters cover each club, and in this case they’ve got two covering two different clubs to cover a transfer between the two.
Liam Twomey covers Chelsea, while Sam Lee does Man City, and they were brought together to discuss Mateo Kovacic’s increasingly likely move from the former to the latter.
We know that Chelsea are keen to sell, but something Twomey said really impressed on us that we could be seeing a fire sale to end all fire sales. You never want to be a seller when the whole world is aware you need to sell, but this is unfortunately the situation that the Blues are in now.
They’re in a deep financial hole and have too many players in their squad. It’s common knowledge they need to sell. That makes it impossible to sell at anywhere near the full potential price for some players – and Man City could be about to get a major bargain according to Twomey:
“These factors mean Chelsea do not have the luxury of being particularly picky about which players they sell — and which clubs they sell them to — in this transfer window. Even a relatively modest fee for Kovacic, who turned 29 earlier this month and can leave for nothing next year, will be viewed internally as a win.”
That sounds like a warning to Chelsea fans that they shouldn’t be shocked when a classy operator like Kovacic is let go for less than half of what we spent on Marc Cucurella.
