1 hour ago, icecoolguy22 said:

So is overpaying for the most shiny thing in the market without thinking through . I get it he just won the world cup, but he only had 20 something games in Europe.

And in those 20 something games he's shown more suitability to a proactive type system than Rice ever has. And the major leagues in South America are a lot better than given credit for as we of all supporters should know after our pair of CWC finals.

Sometimes the quality is just obvious, we got Drogba and Kante after only really one big season. Endrick attracting the big fee to Madrid despite minimum appearances another example, there's a reason they chosen him as opposed to shopping somewhere like Espanyol or Sevilla for a "La Liga proven" forward instead.

On 15/01/2023 at 08:12, Deino said:

That's not what he says at all. You're just extrapolating on a sentence. Of course the clause needs to be met, it doesn't have to be in full upfront as long as the agreed upon fee is met.

The point is, the transfer committee agreed upon a fee then they backtracked to try to renegotiate whilst destablizing the player so much so that the player went on a ministrike. 

It's never just about the money, it's the respect and decorum being shown that's out of line. 

I'm done with this discussion, it's really stupid how they bungled an easy buy for the hottest prospect in world football. A 100m+20m add ons over a 7-8 year contract would have easily got Enzo over the line and they fecked it up. No way Benfica would do a deal with us for this window unless we massively overpay

You can't trigger any release clause in installments. It's the full fee, upfront, or nothing. Benfica haven't requested a similar valuation to the release clause, they have told Chelsea to trigger it. The fee we actually offered was very reasonable given his age and experience. 120m for a hot prospect is nuts.

23 minutes ago, venom2011 said:

You can't trigger any release clause in installments. It's the full fee, upfront, or nothing. Benfica haven't requested a similar valuation to the release clause, they have told Chelsea to trigger it. The fee we actually offered was very reasonable given his age and experience. 120m for a hot prospect is nuts.

In the current climate, 110m pounds for such a talent is pretty much the standard, not so long ago people believed that Rice has that value and Bellingham has it as well, not to mention that we offered 100m for Haaland and he didn't want to come so he requested some crazy salary that Roman couldn't accept and he is earning a lot in Man City. So while our offer was a big one, the release clause in this case is doing its intended purpose, if a bigger club wants their player they have to bite the bullet.

On top of that, from Benfica's perspective it isn't nuts since they are trying to win the league and they are in the knockout stage of the CL just like we are. 

1 hour ago, Argo said:

And in those 20 something games he's shown more suitability to a proactive type system than Rice ever has. And the major leagues in South America are a lot better than given credit for as we of all supporters should know after our pair of CWC finals.

Sometimes the quality is just obvious, we got Drogba and Kante after only really one big season. Endrick attracting the big fee to Madrid despite minimum appearances another example, there's a reason they chosen him as opposed to shopping somewhere like Espanyol or Sevilla for a "La Liga proven" forward instead.

I wish we could witness having at the same time Enzo in the middle, James on the right side and Chilwell on the left, I believe with all 3 of them healthy there wouldn't be a match we could lose.

This is going to prove our new Aguero moment. We'll see him being a star at Real or City or wherever and we'll be kicking ourselves for missing out on the chance to have signed him. And by signing footballer standards, this was a relatively speaking low risk signing in terms of likelihood of success. He's just old enough and has played in the CL and WC in decent sides, and won one of them.

And those complaining about the cost. Who is either an already established and a guaranteed success that we could buy for a similar price, or what highly promising young player can we buy for under 30 million, just in case it doesn't work out?

36 minutes ago, Snedger said:

This is going to prove our new Aguero moment. We'll see him being a star at Real or City or wherever and we'll be kicking ourselves for missing out on the chance to have signed him. And by signing footballer standards, this was a relatively speaking low risk signing in terms of likelihood of success. He's just old enough and has played in the CL and WC in decent sides, and won one of them.

And those complaining about the cost. Who is either an already established and a guaranteed success that we could buy for a similar price, or what highly promising young player can we buy for under 30 million, just in case it doesn't work out?

I think so too, he'll be a world class player for years to come as he ticks all the boxes, I mean he even got his name after his father was fascinated by an Uruguayan player Francescoli. He's one of those that were born to play the game.

Hope we still go after him in the summer after offloading the majority of our players. 

4 hours ago, Snedger said:

This is going to prove our new Aguero moment. We'll see him being a star at Real or City or wherever and we'll be kicking ourselves for missing out on the chance to have signed him. And by signing footballer standards, this was a relatively speaking low risk signing in terms of likelihood of success. He's just old enough and has played in the CL and WC in decent sides, and won one of them.

And those complaining about the cost. Who is either an already established and a guaranteed success that we could buy for a similar price, or what highly promising young player can we buy for under 30 million, just in case it doesn't work out?

Well we did just sign a Torres look alike forward known for pace...

He’ll give us the finger and join City. 
 

 

34 minutes ago, Sconnie Blue said:

He’ll give us the finger and join City. 
 

 

Is a chance we have pi$$Ed him off this window aye.

17 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

Hope we still go after him in the summer after offloading the majority of our players. 

If we don't get Champions League, and that looks nigh certain, he won't even consider Chelsea

8 hours ago, coombsie said:

If we don't get Champions League, and that looks nigh certain, he won't even consider Chelsea

He's was considering us this January despite it as you say looking nigh certain we won't have it next season.

While I don't disagree he probably won't consider us in the summer, that would be the case even if we do have UCL football.

11 hours ago, Argo said:

He's was considering us this January despite it as you say looking nigh certain we won't have it next season.

While I don't disagree he probably won't consider us in the summer, that would be the case even if we do have UCL football.

Only thing I would oppose to this is that he would still be able to play UCL this season and potentially help us win it.

2 hours ago, STATS said:

Only thing I would oppose to this is that he would still be able to play UCL this season and potentially help us win it.

Also there is less competition in this window. Whilst many clubs are dealing not many are dealing in the numbers we are. In the summer I expect a further 5 or 6 clubs will be bidding. We are a fall back choice, there will be other offers that he will be more interested in.

Just under two weeks in the window left. I really hope they prioritise this transfer if it's at all possible.

27 minutes ago, Luca Vialli said:

Just under two weeks in the window left. I really hope they prioritise this transfer if it's at all possible.

3 hours ago, Luca Vialli said:

Just under two weeks in the window left. I really hope they prioritise this transfer if it's at all possible.

I just think we've decided he has a certain value. And we will revisit in the summer when benfica are more flexible. 

I imagine other clubs will sniff around then as well, but there's no guarantee their bid will be higher than ours. 

If we are giving all these long contacts to conform to FFP then what difference does it make if we pay Benfica everything up front rather than in instalments? Pretty sure we have the money.  Wasn’t £1.5 billion of the purchase price to go towards transfers?  Just give him a 9 1/2 year contract.  Worth it just to get ahead of the competition in my opinion.

51 minutes ago, DarkMata said:

If we are giving all these long contacts to conform to FFP then what difference does it make if we pay Benfica everything up front rather than in instalments? Pretty sure we have the money.  Wasn’t £1.5 billion of the purchase price to go towards transfers?  Just give him a 9 1/2 year contract.  Worth it just to get ahead of the competition in my opinion.

The club don’t want to make one installment of 120m. 
 

1 hour ago, bisright1 said:

I just think we've decided he has a certain value. And we will revisit in the summer when benfica are more flexible. 

I imagine other clubs will sniff around then as well, but there's no guarantee their bid will be higher than ours. 

It won't matter in the summer, he agreed to come and we lowballed Benfica and made life, at least for 1 day, more complicated for Enzo and he probably doesn't fancy to take one more try to join us.

Also pretty sure teams like Man City or Bayern can offer him huge wages that we simply can't.

I don't even want to be sad anymore, he is the perfect player we need, I wish we could just sell anyone at this point and get him right now but I know it's over and we blew it. Sure there are other alternatives but the fact that he was willing to come... Oh what a team we would have...

Just pay it. It’s only money, of which there are unimaginable and obscene amounts of in professional football. And besides, I haven’t bought a match ticket in quite a while, I don’t have Sky or BT and I am not on 3s network, so it ain’t my hard earned they’re spending!

Just stick 10% on match tickets, that’ll go some way to meeting the release clause.

One thing is for sure, we won’t get him any cheaper in the summer and there’ll be clubs that are in the CL next season that will be in for him.

4 minutes ago, Snedger said:

Just pay it. It’s only money, of which there are unimaginable and obscene amounts of in professional football. And besides, I haven’t bought a match ticket in quite a while, I don’t have Sky or BT and I am not on 3s network, so it ain’t my hard earned they’re spending!

Just stick 10% on match tickets, that’ll go some way to meeting the release clause.

One thing is for sure, we won’t get him any cheaper in the summer and there’ll be clubs that are in the CL next season that will be in for him.

I'd rather work up some kind of deal that is lower than the release clause and they keep Enzo until the summer. 

The fact they turned down £85 is absurd to me in all honesty but the fact we offered that much gives me hope we will come back. 

29 minutes ago, Gol15 said:

It won't matter in the summer, he agreed to come and we lowballed Benfica and made life, at least for 1 day, more complicated for Enzo and he probably doesn't fancy to take one more try to join us.

Also pretty sure teams like Man City or Bayern can offer him huge wages that we simply can't.

I don't even want to be sad anymore, he is the perfect player we need, I wish we could just sell anyone at this point and get him right now but I know it's over and we blew it. Sure there are other alternatives but the fact that he was willing to come... Oh what a team we would have...

Bayern?! No chance they can afford Enzo.

If we can't offer him the wages, we can't afford the €120m. No other club is offering even €100m right now. No point in being sad, he is priced higher than his value. Be happy we are being sensible with our finances. 

You're also making a lot of assumptions about what contact weve had with Enzo. It's highly unlikely we told Enzo one thing and then did another, the most likely outcome is we told Enzo our intentions and then Benfica turned us down. 

He knows we want him, he clearly likes the sound of the project, we can go back in the summer and if we offer the best option to benfica and him, he will come. 

7 hours ago, DarkMata said:

If we are giving all these long contacts to conform to FFP then what difference does it make if we pay Benfica everything up front rather than in instalments? Pretty sure we have the money.  Wasn’t £1.5 billion of the purchase price to go towards transfers?  Just give him a 9 1/2 year contract.  Worth it just to get ahead of the competition in my opinion.

What I say below is what I've read about the situation, not information I've learned by reading the regulations myself.

Technically buying clubs can't pay the buyout clause. Only the player can do that. What happens in these circumstances is that the buying club gives the player the money to pay the clause. FFP regulations treat such payments to the player as wages, not as a transfer fee. The issue being that, while FFP allows transfer fees to be amortised across the length of the contract, wages have to be accounted in full during the season in which they are paid.

Clearly CFC has calculated that we will fail FFP if we have to account €120m for Enzo in the current season. Given the amount of spending we've done it's easy to see why.

Edited January 19, 20233 yr by OhForAGreavsie

Something I find difficult to square is the stark difference between the way Shakhtar and Benfica say we have behaved. It could seem that we have learned a lesson from the Portuguese club and then behaved better with the Ukrainians. That may not be right however. When we take the timeline of the approach for Mudryck into account, it looks like we were considering both deals at the same time.

Maybe it was just poor communication within the club. Perhaps the person talking to Benfica didn't know about the FFP buyout clause problem, while the Chelsea executives who did know about it assumed that the negotiator did too.