Report: Chelsea offered €20m valued player as part of deal for potential new starter

Things are moving very quickly with Chelsea’s attempts to sign Mike Maignan from AC Milan.

The deal has gone from one way to the other – within the last 24 hours we’ve heard some claims that the Blues had drawn a line in the sand in terms of their offer, a few million short of what Milan wanted.

But we’ve also heard plenty of very confident chatter that a deal is just a matter of time, and could be done before the Tuesday night deadline ahead of the Club World Cup kicking off. We’re in for an exciting 48 hours either way.

Chelsea’s attempts to trade for Maignan

The majority of reports yesterday said that Chelsea were offering €15m and Milan holding out for €20m. It shouldn’t be hard to bridge that gap. But there are some interesting alternative views on how negotiations have gone. The Mirror’s report on the standoff claims that the Blues “had offered Djordje Petrovic or Kepa as part of the deal.”

In Kepa’s case that makes sense. Like Maignan he has only one year left on his deal. He also has a £5m release clause in the contract extension that he signed last summer, so he can’t be valued at more than that in the balance of the deal.

Petrovic trade would value him much lower than estimates

But Petrovic is a much more interesting idea. He’s not on Maignan’s level (yet), but is much younger, and has just had a great season on loan with Strasbourg. He improved a lot in the last 12 months, and looks like he could get even better.

If we were to sell Petrovic this summer, we’d expect to get more than €20m for him. That’s what Transfermarkt have him valued at. So to trade him for a goalkeeper who we value at €15m would have been very interesting indeed.