In a painfully unsurprising way, the Moisés Caicedo saga is still not over, with Chelsea apparently “ready to raise our offer” (The Guardian) to “salvage” (Evening Standard) the situation, even after reportedly losing out to Liverpool at last night’s supposed bidding deadline.
Liverpool’s accepted offer, either £110m or £111m, has even been confirmed by manager Jürgen Klopp in today’s press conference, though perhaps crucially, he says they only have an agreement with Brighton at the moment. Caicedo hasn’t given his blessing to the Reds yet, so in theory, we could jump back in with a bid of at least the same amount (or more), and then have the 21-year-old come to us, which is supposedly his preference.
So that’s all getting a bit silly, and if it’s all just a ploy to get us to pay even more, then it’s even sillier than that. Mind you, had we just paid the £100m asking price at any point in the last two months (before Liverpool got their transfer income from the Saudi Pro League), we surely could’ve gotten this deal done many times over by now. But now — now! — we’re “ready” to pay at least £110m? That’s just amateur-hour, boys. Desperation is a stinky cologne.
Principles aside, if we want our man, and it’s not too late, this is the price we now have to pay. It would hilarious if this was all smoke and mirrors from Liverpool and Brighton, the latter whom are surely have a good old laugh about all this in their boardroom already. We got ‘em again, lads!
On the plus side, we’re doing Transfer Deadline Day in the middle of August, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
