For me this headline and the article itself, that was published by The Express, highlight everything that is wrong with football rumours, gossip and journalism. In my opinion, they take a player who’s been doing well for his club, pick a suitable transfer fee, and select a bigger club where they say they’ll be going.
Player plus cash deals –
When was the last time you personally remember one of these happening – a big money move for a big player, with a player going the other way in return? It’s a rarity, something that barely ever happens. Despite the fact that it never really actually happens, it is still reported about so much. So far in the last month or so, we’ve now seen this rumour, we’ve seen David Luiz go to Bayern in exchange for Mandzukic and a whole host of other random, thrown together, journalist rubbish.
As for the potential deal itself –
Even though I’ve made my stance on these ‘rumours’ very clear, it’s important to think about the actual deal that’s been reported, too. Mehdi Benatia is a fantastic player who’s had a great season with Roma, but he’s not the type of player we should be considering right now. In my opinion, on the centre back front, we’re sorted for some years to come. We can get a couple more years out of the JT – Cahill partnership, whilst we can also slowly bring through the youth options we have (Zouma, Christensen, Ake e.t.c).
And as for getting rid of Lukaku, I don’t think we could do any worse than to do that. He’s proven what he can do after the two loans he’s been on, and that should be good enough to at least cement a place in the squad, and to slowly be integrated into the starting XI.
Moving on to the fee as well, of £18m plus Lukaku. We bought an 18 year old Romelu for around £16million, and having improved as much as he has done, I would look at his value moving towards the £32 million mark. Putting him in the deal plus the fee of £18 million would be both a waste of money and plainly ridiculous. At the age of 21 he’s already scored 65 league goals, and passing that on to another team would be a big mistake.
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