Chelsea improve salary offer to Manuel Ugarte — report

Fair bit of speculation about Manuel Ugarte these days, especially in the Portuguese media, and of course the Twitters, with Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain supposedly the two front-runners vying for the 22-year-old defensive midfielder’s favors. (And in Chelsea’s case, this is said to be not at all related to any potential Moisés Caicedo pursuit.)

Both teams are willing to meet Sporting CP’s valuation (i.e. the €60m release clause, either directly or indirectly paid) so then it’s just the matter of convincing the player to make the correct choice.

One good way to do said convincing is by way of wages, which is exactly what we are doing, as per the latest from leading Portuguese sports daily, Record, who claim that Chelsea have upped the ante to €3.5m per year (base) with various performance-based incentives and bonuses, which is our newly preferred style. This is still below PSG’s previously reported €5m offer, but significantly better than our own previous offer of €2m. Record had claimed earlier that Ugarte would prefer Chelsea and the Premier League over a meme-club, so perhaps that will be enough to convince him.