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For Blues fans, today will mostly be spent sitting around waiting for the Nemanja Matic signing to become official. It's one of those transfers that went from rumour to inevitability very quickly, and there's seemingly no way he isn't introduced as a Chelsea player at some point this week. If you haven't been following along, Duncan Castles has written a helpful summary of how the transfer played out.
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There's not much new in that post, as far as Matic goes. But what is interesting is Castles' account of what happened with the other man commonly cited as a January midfield option -- Inter Milan's Fredy Guarin.
Apparently, Chelsea had come to terms with Inter on the move, agreeing to a £15 million transfer. But the move fell apart when Guarin's advisors entered talks with the Blues. They were asking for €4.5 million a year, claims Castles (about £70,000 per week), which was reasonable enough, but apparently they framed it as a €1 million raise when in fact he's 'only' on €2.5 million a year at the San Siro.
The Blues found out about that discrepancy, and that was enough for the deal to fall apart, leading Chelsea back into the hunt for Matic. Most fans will agree that the club came out far better off for it.
