Not to mention Robert Fleck and Chris Sutton before them plus the issues we had with Mutu!! Though we've had some corkers as well with Jimmy FH, Drogs and Eidur G.
Yeah they were all very good tbf You'll be selling Lukaku as well wont you? Cant see him sitting on the bench
If we need to sell to fund further transfers it may happen. Given his age, he'd be ideal to come in and play understudy to a Costa. We'll need 3 strikers next year and you could make a case for all 3 of the current ones leaving. I'd be happy with Costa, Lukaku and Eto'o myself.
Not sure about Eto'o. He will be another year older!!!!!! We really have to keep Lukaku although if the books need balancing and its a choice between letting him or Courtois go then I would keep Courtois. Was reading an interesting article the other day that showed we had virtually paid for Courtois with his 3 loan spells and if we get the money due for the CL clause we'll already be in profit on him. I hope we can extend his contract and keep hold of him but if not it will have turned out to be extremely good from a business point as was De Bruyne.
Think Eto'o has done pretty well myself, is a good professional and adds some useful experience to the squad. Still runs around a fair bit for an older player and a year wont make that much difference. I agree I'd rather Courtois than Lukaku purely as Courtois is already world class where as Lukaku to me hasn't proved it at the top level yet. They'd probably both fetch 20-25 million so like you say, one may end up going.
If we can value Torres at somewhere between 5M to 10M and exchange for Costa, Then we can consider Diego costa to be 40M or 45M !! I just hope we don't pay 50m all cash for Diego Costa. That is a huge weight for any player to shoulder.
I thought Costa had a clause in his contract which meant if anybody offered 32m it had to be accepted?
I think the confusions lies in some quoting Euro for the price tag. A very similar thing happened when Torres first went to Liverpool and the papers were full of how he'd taken a pay cut to join them. Rafa was confronted on Spanish radio about it and admitted it wasn't true and that he was on more. It happens quite a lot. I like this site for transfer fees http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/transfers/startseite-km/transfers.html they have no bias and check financial reports to get a truer picture.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/chelsea-transfer-gossip-ramires-barcelona-3456624#ixzz2zuMHSWBw 20m plus a player for Ramires from Barca, I would take it personally. But which player
If we can ship off Ramires for £20m, it'll probably be the best bit of the business we've done in a while. I'd love to take Rafinha (the brother of Bayern's Thiago), though at 21 I imagine not the kind of youngster they meant. And I don't think it'll be just one of Luiz and Ramires, as Barca see Luiz as a CB, not a DM. Although I'd like Luiz to stay.
Ramires would likely be a replacement for Song or Fabregas, think they have realised they need a central midfielder who can be an engine and not just another tiki taka passer.
Vidal to Chelsea in swap-deal for Ramires. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/chelsea-transfers-artuto-vidal-juventus-3463728 A man can dream!
Was going to post that earlier ^^ Vidal for 20m?! He'd go for double that, however i'd be extremely happy if we can work out a deal were we'd get Vidal and they got Ramires. He's the person i'd like us to sign to play alongside Matic. Just as important as a new striker IMO.
Arturo Vidal, was extremely disappointed we never signed him from Leverkusen when he was on fire for them. Can pass, tackle and shoot. Would be the perfect compliment to Matic and offer us some drive. Very much paper talk so far though