Chelsea asked a 700% Spurs tax over potential Batshuayi loan

Chelsea told Tottenham to stick their money up their Hotspur, unless they were willing to pay 700% more than Crystal Palace for Michy Batshuayi, it’s been reported since the affable striker made his move to South London in the dying minutes of the January transfer window.

Palace are paying around £1m for Batshuayi’s services for the rest of the season (plus wages, one would assume, or at least part of them), but they’re getting a steep discount as apparently Chelsea would’ve charged West Ham United £4m and Tottenham Hotspur a rather Higuaín-sized £8m. LOL, Spurs!

Head Eagle Roy Hodgson believes that taking good care of Ruben Loftus-Cheek played a big role in this, but I’d like to believe that we were just trying to be extra dickish to Spurs — or both — especially as apparently all this happened while Hodgson was already sleeping the sleep of old people (“he only found out about the next morning having gone to bed early on deadline day”).

“I can’t say I’m surprised about it, I’m very pleased about it. A lot of it has to do with the relationship with Chelsea and Crystal Palace, Chelsea people and our chairman, Steve Parish.

“I thought we did a very good job last year with for Chelsea with Ruben Loftus-Cheek, he did a great job for us, we didn’t exactly send him back as a worse player or a player with less value, I think that stands in our favour.”

And it’s not just RLC’s development that Hodgson thinks was positive from Chelsea’s perspective, but the added transfer value that the midfielder now can command as well. And while that’s probably not a consideration since we don’t want to sell Ruben, the situation may be a bit different with Michy come next summer (as sad as that will be, since he’s a fun character).

“[Loftus-Cheek] came to us as a player from the Chelsea reserves who very rarely got a game outside of the League Cup, he went back an England international whose value will have probably tripled or quadrupled, so I think you could also say Crystal Palace put a lot of money into Chelsea’s pocket.”

In more immediate concerns, Hodgson’s looking forward to seeing Michy in action after this 10-minute impactful cameo over the weekend.

“It was a real pleasure to get Michy, he’s a real bubbly character, we saw that when he came on and I’m sure he’ll enjoy his time with us, and I’m just hoping we enjoy him as well, because if we do enjoy him it means we’re winning matches and he’s scoring goals.”

-Roy Hodgson; source: Independent

And maybe help take a few points off our rivals for the top four? Ideally Spurs, even? Make it so. (Palace play Spurs again on March 17 in what could be the opening game at Spurs’ new stadium.)