Yesterday afternoon’s quiet stretch was broken by the rather surprising news that Pedro Lima – the Brazilian full back who looked set for a move to Chelsea affiliate Strasbourg just hours before – had accepted a better offer from Wolves.
His club, Sport Recife, announced on their website that the transfer was effectively completed – although there are still some small boxes to tick. Under normal circumstances, one would expect Chelsea owners BlueCo to return with a better bid of their own. But on the Athletic podcast today, David Ornstein explained that Chelsea’s owners may feel like they’ve had the rug pulled from under them when they thought their deal was done.
“Let’s see if Chelsea come back in and offer to increase the terms,” Ornstein said.
“I’d be a little bit surprised because if you’ve got your deal in place already, and then somebody comes in and goes on to for a player at this level does it leave a bit of a bad taste? Let’s see what the coming days bring.
Chelsea could go either way
We’re sure that the decision makers at Chelsea won’t be too sentimental or proud about these things, and if they think Lima can still be got for a good price, and if they’re convinced he really is a top prospect, they won’t be afraid to get stuck in to a second attempt to sign him.
But we do understand what Ornstein means – perhaps being burned the first time will convince Chelsea that Sport Recife aren’t the kind of team they want to deal with (although realistically they’ve done nothing wrong from what we see from the outside, just accepted a preferable offer).
So while we’re inclined to agree with Ornstein that the Blues are out of this race, nothing would surprise us now.