Mark Brus has an exclusive for CaughtOffside’s Daily Briefing today which has some worrying parts, for us.
He wrote about the Noni Madueke deal after the winger switched Chelsea for Arsenal in the summer for more than £50m.
Internal concerns about Chelsea’s Madueke decision
While lots of fans were happy to shift him, his replacements have yet to reach his level, and it seems there may be doubts about the deal internally at the club, as well as in the fanbase.
“I can now also reveal that there was some genuine concern inside Chelsea about letting Madueke go when his underlying numbers were so promising, and with the player now another year older and more experienced.”
“Checking in with multiple sources in the industry today, they all confirmed that key figures in the recruitment team made their case at the time that selling Madueke was a “risky†call and one that could come back to haunt them.”
Yet the Blues still went ahead, looking at the tasty margin they had on a player signed for less than £25m two and a half years ago.
Chelsea’s satisfaction with deal is worrying sign
But there’s another side to it:
“Sources close to Chelsea deny this, and will point to the fact that they have a model based on buying talented young players like Madueke before selling for a profit. To offload Madueke for over double what they paid for him after two and a half patchy seasons is seen by the Blues as great business.”
That’s kind of the problem, however. It’s fair enough if Chelsea sell Madueke and use the money to buy a better player. But to be happy just that you made a profit on him isn’t enough, and points towards a club which is trying to focus on profit over points.
In a rush to spin your preferred narrative (of an ownership obsessed with profit rather than winning) you’ve neglected to mention the most important aspect of the Madueke sale—Maresca was totally exasperated with the player’s poor commitment to training. We’ve seen Maresca in action long enough to have seen him protect his players time and again in the media, even hedging the truth at times. So for him to speak publicly on more than one occasion about Madueke’s poor training is an essential fact in this story. This “profit at all cost†narrative ignores this basic and essential fact—that Maresca had had it with Madueke’s lack of professionalism. There’s just no scenario in which we unload a player of his quality to a bitter rival (no matter the offer!) unless the manager had reached his wit’s end. How do you report this story and fail to acknowledge this as a key factor in his sale?
We as an Arsenal fans we’re much ok with the player moving to the mighty gunners.
I am Joseph Ansumana Musa from Sierra Leone â¤ï¸
One may well suspect Madueke’s attitude to training was a ploy to get himself removed the hell out of that club to where he feels more comfortable