Hot off the presses thanks to Sky Sports’ Spanish Football Expert Guillem Balague is the news regarding a French-Ivorian midfielder’s move from French first division side AS Monaco to English Premier League side Chelsea. Maybe Balague is expanding his purview.
The midfielder in question is Tiemoue Bakayoko, who’s been actively linked with Chelsea (and others like Manchester United) since January as the active dismantling of Monaco’s young and talented and exciting side begins in earnest. Last month, the 22-year-old supposedly rejected Monaco’s offer of a contract extension, adding extra momentum to his impending move away from the club in the summer.
Monaco's Bakayoko has agreed personal terms with Chelsea. Next step is for Chelsea to pay Monaco more than anybody else for the midfielder pic.twitter.com/XgbvJKvNPD
— Guillem Balague (@GuillemBalague) March 21, 2017
So that’s where Balague comes in, claiming that “Bakayoko has agreed personal terms with Chelsea”, but that Chelsea still have to outbid any other interested party to actually sign the player. So that seems a bit backwards, through presumably Chelsea have Monaco’s permission to do so rather than trying our luck with tapping up again.
The previously rumored price for Bakayoko was in the 40m range and chances are, we’d be looking at a similar outlay, especially if any sort of bidding war got started. That’s pretty steep for any player, though in today’s market, perhaps not that outrageous.
So, good news if you want Bakayoko, but probably nothing too concrete to get excited about, despite words like “agree terms”. Stay tuned.