Chelsea slap £43 million price-tag on Barca target
Jose Mourinho has said that there is ‘no chance’ of David Luiz leaving Chelsea for Barcelona this summer but the club has slapped a £43 million (€50m) asking price on the defender.
This is according to freelance sports journalist Duncan Castles, who says that the Blues quickly rejected what I believe to be an insulting offer of £21.5m for David Luiz as it’s less than the fee Chelsea paid for him. You’d think that a player who has won the FA Cup, Champions League and Europa League in the past two seasons would go up in value, not according to the logic at the Camp Nou it seems.
Castles believes that the La Liga champions are still trying to make up for missing out on Thiag Silva when the Brazilian signed for Paris Saint-Germain for £37 million last year and may struggle to meet Chelsea’s valuation of Luiz as they have already committed much of their funds into securing Neymar’s signature earlier in the summer.
Tottenham’s Jan Vertonghen and Liverpool defender Daniel Agger have been mooted as potential alternatives to Luiz but the Anfield outfit have already rejected an approach for the latter whilst Daniel Levy is a stubborn negotiator, neither will let one of their prized assets leave on the cheap and Barca are acting like a bunch of chancers so will probably go another summer without a major addition to their back-line.
I think it’s almost impossible for David Luiz to leave Stamford Bridge for Spain this summer as the club don’t particularly want to go searching for a replacement with little value in the market and the only way it could possibly happen is if the player demands it, and he may have to go public. I don’t believe he’s really so desperate to leave Chelsea and with Mourinho in charge he knows that we will be in the mix for silverware on top of the honours he’s already won, why would he want to give that up?
He’s shaping up to be our first choice centre-back and has even been tipped as a potential captain. I reckon he’s staying put.
Source: Goal.com