Caughtoffside’s exclusive today claims that Chelsea are interested in Michael Olise of Crystal Palace.
They’re saying that Newcastle and Man U, our rivals for the Europa League places this year, will also rival us for the brilliant French talent. Even Liverpool are said to be monitoring the situation for the eventuality in which Mo Salah leaves this summer.
The Blues are “waiting in the wings”, presumably hoping that the bidding doesn’t get out of control while they’re still appointing a new manager.
We came very close to signing him last summer, only for the deal to break down at the last minute with accusations of illegal “tapping up” being made against us. That has certainly soured things, but it always feels like Palace will do business with us as long as we make the payment that they find acceptable.
After another great season for Olise, that will now be even bigger than last year. His new clause is believed to be £50m, and a bidding war could mean we end up paying more.
It makes no sense – but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen
There has been some pretty strong debate among fans over whether Chelsea would consider signing Olise this summer.
It seems crazy, given the talent we have already in wide positions, especially left footed right sided attackers. The arrival of Kendry Paez and Estevao Willian is only going to increase competition there.
But we’ve given up on trying to apply logic to the moves being made by the club now. The fact of having multiple sporting directors as well as multiple other recruitment heads in different roles, plus multiple owners all pulling in different directions means that we’re regularly making unpredictable and often inexplicable moves which don’t add up to a sensible big picture.
Olise is a brilliant player and we won’t rule ourselves out of the race at all, despite it not really making sense for us right now.
