Manea deal not done yet, according to reports

Several days ago, we heard news out of Romania that Chelsea had agreed to a relatively inexpensive deal to sign Romanian international Cristian Manea. The 17-year old was reportedly set to head straight out on loan in January, either to Vitesse Arnhem or Mallorca.

Viitorul Sporting Director/Owner/Do everything guy Georghe Hagi put the breaks on this talk morning though, suggesting that a deal might not be completed yet. Here's Google Translate's take on what he had to say:

"He, and others offer. We offer many. He is one of the most courted players, but it's not true that it will lead somewhere or another.'s up to him how to play this year. If will play well, will stay with us for another year. depends only he will make this year's developments, for all you do. Otherwise you will stay with us for another year. At this point no signed any preliminary."

"About Ianis will hear shortly.'s courted him. But he decides. plays his last word. I can not take one, the market will decide. During the last years, we had lots of teams 56 players national, so a rate of 50 percent. That means I did a good job. I must congratulate all of the academy, did a very good job. This pleased me so much that I decided to start a new project with the same winning mentality."

I'm not even going to try to clean this one up, but it seems pretty clear that he's suggesting that no deal is done quite yet. How close a potential deal could be is a bit up in the air, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.