Chelsea to swoop for Arsenal and Napoli target?
The Argentine forward has been a target of both Napoli and Arsenal but it’s believed that the latter’s £23m deal has stalled, and De Lauurentiis has told the press that the Blues may want to use this to their advantage registering their own bid for Higuain.
In an interview with Tuttomercato, De Laurentiis said:
“Now, we have Chelsea involved, as well as Arsenal.”
Earlier in the week Jose Mourinho told reporters at a press conference that Wayne Rooney was Chelsea’s only target and the club had submitted a formal offer for the player. Mourinho could be telling fibs to put pressure on Rooney and at the very least he was probably being economic with the truth as part of his game, so other targets remain a possibility.
Spanish daily AS also reported on the rumour:
AS understands that Chelsea have made an offer to sign Real Madrid’s Gonzalo Higuaín, with the striker admitting: “Mou wants me there”
— AS English (@English_AS) July 18, 2013
Like any potential transfer, it’s a good deal as long as the price it right and the player is of sufficient quality. If he’s going for around the £25 million mark then he’s a great option. But if it’s in excess of £30m then I can’t see Chelsea pursuing it and nor should they.
He scored 19 goals in 44 games during the last campaign which is his lowest total since his injury hit season in 2011 when he only scored 13, but he was rotated with Karim Benzema for much of the time. Usually he’d score more than 20 goals in a season and has 122 of them in 266 appearances in total for Los Blancos.
At 25 he’s also at a good age as he’s yet to reach his peak and is one of the few players that didn’t turn his back on Mourinho at the Santiago Bernabeu last season. I’m pre-empting that someone will bring up the ‘quote’ in which Mourinho labelled Higuain as lazy, it’s a pure internet (Twitter) fabrication (not even a good one, as if he’d be so crass) like many others that are wrongly attributed to our manager by idiots in order to get retweets on a social networking site.
Source: Express