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Within just 24 hours, as first reported by Sky Sports, West Ham’s asking price for Andy Carroll has dropped from £35m to just a little over half to £20m. Perhaps they realized that not even an apparently desperate Chelsea would pay the same amount for this London-based 29-year-old as Manchester United are about to pay a certain other London-based 29-year-old.
Alas, Chelsea are still very much after the former 29-year-old rather than the latter, with Alexis Sanchez’s move to United merely a matter of time (and possibly pending whatever’s going to happen with Henrikh Mkhitaryan and/or Arsenal signing a replacement). In fairness, Alexis would make for a very bad “classic target man” center forward, just as Carroll would make for a very bad “actual footballer”. Chelsea could use both, but looks likely to get just the one who’s injured.
Oh yeah, did we mention that Andy “perpetually injured” Carroll is injured? But of course he is!
“Chelsea have not made contact with me. If they have made contact with someone else, I don’t know about it. At the moment Andy has an ankle injury. He had an injection 10 days ago and we’re hoping he will be training soon.”
-David Moyes; source: Telegraph
Chelsea signing injured players is so 2017 it hurts, especially in 2018.
What could possibly go wrong? While £20m is certainly better than £35m, I’d still far more prefer this nonsense to go through as a loan rather than a longer-term commitment.