Matt Law has been on the London is Blue podcast today, where he gave his opinion on the chaos surrounded Trevoh Chalobah right now.
Chelsea want to sell their academy defender, that much is clear. But Law can’t believe how they’re going about it.
He pointed out that the Blues had “destroyed” and “absolutely obliterated” their negotiating position by leaving the young defender at home, signalling to the world that he wasn’t wanted (or rated highly).
They’re now getting offers around £25m for a player who could and should be worth almost double that, if they’d handled things right. Instead, they showed their hand, and now nobody is going to step up and pay full whack, knowing the club are desperate to be rid of him.
In fact, Law even speculates they could get less than £25m for him after this fumbling.
Another misstep from faulty Blues logic
He’s bang on. And it’s not the first mistake in this Chalobah saga. Firstly, you’ve got to question the self scouting all along. Chalobah was never rated as highly as he should have been by any of the managers or ownerships.
When it did become clear that he was going to be a good player and a potential regular, he was given a long contract. That’s great – but not if the plan is then to sell him 6 months later. Since then it’s been a desperate scramble to get rid of him, while he’s able to sit back and now he’s under no pressure to accept anything.
The decision to not take him on tour, which is a tactic to try and force him to accept a move and undermine this security he feels, then ends up ruining the club’s strength when they ask for a fee, as Law points out.
It’s really layers of errors poured on top of one another.
Chalobah is different class to both Colwill and Fofana, Chelsea have leaked goals in pre-season and will do so without Chalobah at the back. A new manager before Xmas is my prediction, with probably the worst defence in Chelseas history.