After a manic day on Friday, journalist Sacha Tavolieri reported on Twitter that the Blues had almost found a £55m agreement with Southampton for Lavia.
“Agreement between CFC & Saints FC now close to 52M£ + 3M£ add-ons,” Tavolieri says. “Not a done deal yet as it left some extra information to be exchanged tomorrow even if Soton accepted the fee as revealed this evening.
“Blues wants to extend the number of contract years from 5 to 7 years contract + one year option as for Lesley Ugochukwu.
“Been told Chelsea FC wants to anticipate a possibly last minute hijack from Liverpool FC by asking the team responsible to be prepared for medical tests.
“Joe Shields absolutely impressive for #CFC on this transfer while LFC was scary to meet Southampton FC financial requests.”
Has there ever been a better transfer saga than this?!
Chelsea wary of Liverpool hijack
Things are surely going to come to a head on both the Caicedo and Lavia deals today. After a two days of utter madness, things can’t go on like this.
The crux of the matter is obviously going to be what happens with Caicedo. Wherever the Ecuador international ends up, Lavia probably goes the opposite way.
You’d think that would almost certainly be true in Liverpool’s case, anyway. The Belgian had seemingly always preferred to join the Reds, but with Caicedo in play, they turned elsewhere.
For Chelsea, it simply doesn’t seem feasible that they could pay for both, either. However, Todd Boehly and co seem to have a license to do whatever they please in the transfer market, so you can’t rule that out.
You also can’t rule out that they’re going after Lavia just to spite Liverpool. Nevertheless, there are two players future’s and well-being at stake here and the clubs should be mindful of that.
Southampton have a game against Norwich later on today. If Lavia is in the matchday squad there, then things may not be as far along as they appear.
But if the Belgium international isn’t present at St Mary’s, something is likely to be in the works. Liverpool may come back in, but surely only if they lose out on Caicedo. By then, perhaps it’ll already be too late.
