Manchester City submit £25m lowball for Mateo Kovačić — report

Manchester City have followed the examples of Manchester United and Arsenal in submitting an opening lowball bid (£25m as per The Athletic) for one of our players, doing so for Mateo Kovačić after the others had done so for Mason Mount and Kai Havertz, respectively.

And presumably Chelsea will now do exactly what we had done in the cases of those two, and reject this offer with extreme prejudice. Pay up, cheapskates!

Of course, Chelsea are standing on thinly leveraged grounds, with all three players reportedly wanting to leave and go to these other teams. And Kovačić, like Mount, only has one year left on his contract so unless we arrange a transfer this summer, he’s likely to leave for free next summer (and be all disgruntled for the next twelve months to boot). Havertz does have two years left, but evidently made it clear that he’d just put us in the same situation next summer as Mason and Mateo now, so we’re not bothering to deal with that noise either.

Still, all three teams can certainly find it within themselves to pay a proper valuation. So, time to hit that up arrow a few times, City, and come back with something more reasonable. Cheers.