A report earlier this weekend from Marca in Spain claims that Valencia, despite new ownership headed by Peter Lim taking over two years ago, are already facing financial problems and thus will have to sell one of their two highly rated young stars André Gomes or Shkodran Mustafi.
El Valencia ofrece a Mustafi para evitar la venta de André Gomes https://t.co/zHjHspGC9E pic.twitter.com/f9biFlrRAZ
— FichajesMARCA (@Marcatransfer) July 16, 2016
The report claims that while earlier this summer it looked like André Gomes would be the one making way, it now appears that Valencia would prefer to sell Mustafi instead.
Gomes, who last week won the European Championships Portugal, was linked with Chelsea last summer, but this time around Manchester United and Juventus were hottest on his trail. Chelsea did supposedly have an outrageous €53m bid rejected for the soon-to-be 23-year-old, but not only was that rumor rather tenuously sourced, we've since proceeded to secure N'Golo Kanté's signature instead.
Valencia's supposed decision to prefer a Mustafi sale could however play into Chelsea's hands as we look for a center back signing. Napoli have priced Kalidou Koulibaly out of the realm of reasonableness even in these days of massively inflated transfer fees while Roma have no intention of selling Kostas Manolas. Mehdi Benatia is gone; others like Leonardo Bonucci or Raphael Varane are pipe dreams. The 24-year-old Mustafi, who was ostensibly Germany's third-choice center back at Euro 2016 behind Jérôme Boateng and Mats Hummels could fit the bill. The Mirror put his price around £25m.