Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s potential move to Marseille has moved quickly in the last 24 hours, but it may have hit a snag.
Nizaar Kinsella in the Evening Standard is reporting that the striker has agreed to take a massive wage cut to return to France – a stumbling block that had always made us worry that it would be hard to shift the striker, who we signed only a year ago.
We paid about £12m for him then, and now we’re asking £5m to move him on. It’s not much, but it’s also quite a lot for a 34 year old who looked consistently terrible last year. Marseille are understandably feeling like they’re doing Chelsea a favour by taking the Gabon forward off their books, and they’re reluctant to pay anything at all.
It may come down to a battle to save face – in reality, given how much cash has been squandered by Chelsea over the years, £5m isn’t going to make much difference one way or the other, and collapsing this move for the sake of it would be mad.
