Romelu Lukaku's Fate Now In Chelsea's Hands

Chelsea are extremely close to signing highly-rated Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku, according to club officials from Anderlecht. With Lukaku wanting a move and the club accepting that losing him is at this point inevitable, it's looking very likely that the 18-year-old will indeed end up at Stamford Bridge before too long, which should cheer up the legions of Blues fans who'd love to see the New Drogba(TM) come to London. The only holdup now is the transfer fee.

There is no agreement at the moment... There are on-going negotiations and Chelsea know what we want. Imagine that, one day, Roman Abramovich is in a good mood and he offers that amount and this can be fixed tomorrow. At the moment that is not the case. However, all three parties know what they want and what we have to do to come to an agreement. And now most of it depends upon Chelsea.

-Herman van Holsbeeck, Anderlecht general manager. Source: Guardian.

Lukaku said just a few days ago that he was essentially waiting until he became a Chelsea player, and Anderlecht are clearly trying to regain the initiative by telling the Blues that there'll be little in the way of movement from their stated selling price, which is believed to be around £13M. As for Chelsea, the Guardian are claiming that they're trying to minimise their risk by splitting that fee into a lower base value and then add-ons, which duh. Of course they are.

I'm still on a quote-interpretation kick thanks to too long spent trying to probe the words of Maurizio Zamparini, so I'm going to try it here, for whatever it's worth: I think that van Holsbeeck is telling Chelsea to stop messing around and get on with it after a couple of days of frustration. At this point, the sides don't appear to be very far off at all, and with Anderlect not moving it's up to Chelsea to blink first.

They will*, and I'd expect them to do it soon.

*Well, since I've said this, they won't.