Chelsea agree personal terms with, increase bid for Leandro Paredes — report

Leandro Paredes ‘has an agreement for a contract’ with Chelsea, claims Nico Schira, the Italian journalist who was one of the first to report Chelsea’s interest in the 24-year-old former Empoli and Roma midfielder.

The terms of the agreement are a fairly standard 4.5-year contract at €4.5m annually — or about £75k weekly (assuming those are net figures, as if usually the case in Italian media, or 166k at the max 45% tax rate) — not the cheapest, but also hardly anything out of the ordinary these days.

The sticking point with Paredes remains his transfer fee, over which Chelsea and Zenit St. Petersburg continue to negotiate. Chelsea offered €30m, Zenit want €40m, Chelsea have come back with €35m — again, just as with the contract terms, a fairly standard procedure, and a fairly standard price inside of a price range that has become Chelsea’s comfort zone over the past few transfer windows.

Given the standard steps this transfer has taken so far, assuming it doesn’t surprisingly turn out to be just a bunch of smoke with nothing substantial behind it, Paredes should become a Chelsea player fairly soon as well.