Chelsea’s Sarri pursuit remains all talk, no action after latest round of negotiations

After a few days of zero apparent progress, Chelsea have continued to not make just about zero progress on the Maurizio Sarri situation on Wednesday. That all this nonsense could be avoided just by paying €8m, and the club’s refusal to do so, continues to baffle to no end. To put that amount into perspective, we sold Papy Djilobodji for more two years ago!

In any case, according to our friendly neighborhood Nizaar Kinsella, Chelsea returned to the negotiating table today after last week’s intense, two-day extravaganza. This time the location was Milan, for some reason, though there is very little actual progress to report.

While Chelsea “remain optimistic”, apparently personal terms are not as far along as previously reported, with the two sides still finalizing contracts terms, both as far as salary and a potential option for a third year are concerned. Previous reports claimed that Chelsea’s offer is for 2 years at €6-6.5m per, which translates to somewhere in the region of £5-5.5m, but now there is an option (for one or both sides) for a third year that’s being discussed as well.

Meanwhile, the bigger issue remains Sarri’s release clause at Napoli, which the Blues continue to refuse to pay and are instead looking to waste time by indulging Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis in these silly games.

The release clause expires tomorrow, and after that, we’d be entering uncharted territory. Chelsea are already negotiating from a position of weakness. Why are we insisting on making this as painful as possible?

(Unless we’re keeping Conte, in which case, we need to make that clear, give him the contract instead, and drop this nonsense yesterday.)