The Blues News

Jumped into the world wide web today and a fellow tweep (Sirpablo90) welcomed me with the news of Chelsea’s Azpi bid being rejected. He pointed me to The Daily Mail‘s story that went like this: “We’ll be back! Chelsea to up offer for Azpilicueta after £5.4m bid is rejected”

What is so special about that, you may ask. Nothing, I would say, except for the reported bid amount. A few days ago there were some reports that suggested, Chelsea had bid for Azpi and it was turned down. However, the figure quoted was different. Below is the table for the Azpi bids so far ( 29 July to 02 August )

So why are different figures being quoted by different sources. No bloody clue. Anyways, let us try and make sense of all this.

Most of the sources, in the table above, are part of the British media family ( as far as I know, at least they report in English ). French media were the first ones to report Chelsea’s interest in Azpi. You can check out the earlier post on Chelsea’s Azpi interest here.

Only back then, it was claimed that Olympique de Marseille would settle for a a price of €9 Million. Reason for the low amount being, OM are in a bit of financial soup and have to sell, quickly.

If you take a look at the reported bids, the figure seems to have gone down. It started from £7 Million on 29 July and has come down to £5.4 Million today ( 02 August ) touching the lowest amount of £5 Million, as well, along the way.

So what in the world is going on? The usual transfer market conundrum coupled with lazy journalism, perhaps? We are still not sure of the correct transfer fee for Oscar. British (English) media have been adamant on £25 Million while the Brazilian media have been quoting €25 Million. Only problem being, Brazilian clubs don’t do business in £. It is either € or $. As of today, 1 £ = € 1.27. Not silly money, isn’t it.

So I’m going to put my head (not arse)  on the line, and say most of them (media) out there don’t have a clue  are lazy. One of the possibility is that  the earlier figure quoted in the media was rubbish. Maybe they were taking a wild swing at the price. OM want €9 Million, so lets go with a figure that is slightly lower than the maximum price. No one will offer the maximum possible amount in the game of bargaining, or would they. Maybe Chelsea would. Because Chelsea/Roman have a currency printing machine.

There hasn’t been any official confirmation from either of the club’s officials yet, to make matters worse. Chelsea’s interest in Azpi is legitimate. The bid amount, however, isn’t. Negotiations could be ongoing. This news will gather more steam as Spain’s disappointing Olympic journey is over. A €9 Million bid along with a Kakuta loan offer should be enough to land Azpi. Let us see how things turn out. Transfer season is fun, as always.

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• Azpilicueta to Chelsea