New conditions for Nemanja Matić’s potential transfer from Chelsea to Manchester United

Unless something drastically changed behind the scenes while Chelsea were away in East Asia on the pre-season tour, Nemanja Matić will be heading towards the exit door just the same when the squad roll back into town on Sunday. That door continues to point towards Manchester United much more so than towards Juventus, with the former much more willing to fork out the money than the latter, and the latest reports confirm this. We’re picking the Mail here, but similar stories are running in the Mirror and the Star and The Sun and all the other usual tabloids and such.

As part of an overarching narrative wherein José Mourinho is not quite happy with Manchester United’s activities so far in the transfer window — is anybody in the top six happy other than Pep Guardiola? — the former Chelsea boss is set to push his new employers on the reunion with his former key midfielder at Chelsea (with Fellaini perhaps leaving at the same time). Earlier reports have claimed that Chelsea have already sanctioned a potential deal, but only at £50m.

The Mail claim that price has now gone down to £40m, but also claim that Conte doesn’t want the deal to go through until Chelsea add another midfielder into the mix. How those two things are related is not quite clear as Matić seems to not be factoring into our plans at all for next season regardless of what happens elsewhere. So unless Conte’s hoping to convince the Spiderbeast to stay for another season (amidst increasing competition for places), there’s really no point in waiting.