Stoke City test the waters with £5m lowball rumor for Victor Moses

Following the entirely unsurprising proclamation from the Stoke City front office that they'd like to bring Victor Moses on board for next season as well, here comes the entirely unsurprising public price check from, presumably, one of the agents or string-pullers behind either the player or the club.  Probably the club, considering the amount floated to the Mirror.

Stoke are set to offer Chelsea £5million to make the loan of winger Victor Moses permanent this summer.

-source: Mirror

Five?  Come on now.  As the great bare-knuckle boxing champion Mickey once said, you lose more than that running for the bus!  Surely, flush with all this new TV deal money, Stoke can do better than that!

That being said, it's hardly anything to lose sleep over.  Five million is five million.  If Moses is truly happy at Stoke and has no desire to play for Chelsea, then, as Mourinho put it when asked about what he thinks about players (like Raheem Sterling) wanting to leave clubs yesterday, "If he wants to leave, if he doesn't want to work with me, if he doesn't want to play for Chelsea ... [then] he has a price."

Chelsea have done remarkably well recently in getting paid for players who were no longer keen on staying (e.g. Lukaku, De Bruyne, Mata, Schurrle), so perhaps they'll toss this lowball back to Stoke with little hesitation.  Moses does have two years left on his contract, which leaves us with a little bit of leverage still.  Considering how well he's done this season, he's bound to have other suitors as well.  (Moses linked with x,y,z rumors incoming in 3, 2, 1...)