Jose Mourinho continues to drive Chelsea FC’s transfer activity
By George Perry
While Jose Mourinho teaches the Red Devils to park the bus at Old Trafford, Manchester United’s front office will be attacking and raiding Chelsea’s transfer market like a Sir Alex Ferguson offense. Or so the Silly Season rumor mill will have us believe.
So this is how it’s going to be.
Chelsea express interest in a player in the transfer market, Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United splash an offer. Chelsea bid for a player, United offer 15% more. Chelsea’s lineup starts to come into focus, Mourinho looks to get the band back together by bringing “his players” along to Old Trafford.
The Express reported yesterday that Manchester United topped Chelsea’s bid for Sporting Lisbon’s midfielder Joao Mario by £6 million. The Portuguese’s transfer fee jumped so much as it passed from blue to red that every other interested club supposedly withdrew from the table.
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Just a few hours earlier, the Express also announced that Jose Mourinho is preparing to lure Nemanja Matic to Manchester United. Superficially, this move makes sense for manager and player. Mourinho brought Matic to back to Chelsea, and they won the Premier League. Mourinho leaves Chelsea, Matic had an atrocious season. Clearly, reuniting at Old Trafford will spell success for them both (provided, of course, you overlook how poorly Matic played in Mourinho’s final half-season at Chelsea).
Remember Chelsea’s ongoing, season-long attempts to bring in John Stones from Everton? Sure as failure follows Arsene Wenger, Mourinho is apparently interested in buying the English defender for United.
Set aside for a minute whether any of these rumored moves are possible, probable, likely or even originating with a halfway knowledgeable source inside the club. We went through the looking glass once social media hit Silly Season. They all sound just reasonable enough that people will believe them.
“How much will we lose if we unload this guy?” is now “How much profit can we extract by selling this high-value asset?”
Mourinho’s pique, fans’ perception of his pettiness, Manchester United’s willingness to spend, Chelsea’s low success rate with both incoming and outgoing transfers, players’ dissatisfactions and affinities…enough of each of these elements are present in every rumor that they pass the smell test.
Whether any of these supposed transfers come to pass, they are already impacting the transfer market and clubs’ intentions and actions. False or unsubstantiated information that people believe to be true affects behavior just as much as the honest truth. Clubs that may not have dropped their designs on Joao Mario upon hearing of United’s bid are more likely to do so now, merely because they heard that other clubs had already done so.
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Nemanja Matic is under contract with Chelsea until 2019. This past season laid bare his mental fragility, generating plenty of speculation around his future with the club and whether he has a place in Antonio Conte’s side. His performance in the 2015/16 campaign reduced his potential transfer value and made him a liability for a club that is reluctant to splash out money for a replacement.
Enter rumors of Mourinho’s interest in Matic and United’s £200 million transfer purse. Instantly, Matic is now an asset. The Blues can raise their asking price to a team for whom price is little concern. They could even attempt to interest a third club in Matic to force United to inflate their offer further. “How much will we lose if we unload this guy?” is now “How much profit can we extract by selling this high-value asset?”
An ancillary benefit of this bid war could be raising Matic’s confidence in parallel with the tendered offers. Having two (or more) top club’s offering more and more for your services can be a powerful infusion of confidence in your value and place in world football.
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We are still two months away from the transfer window, so this dynamic will repeat itself many times before the first deal is actually signed. Each new rumor – as long as it hits some baseline level of plausibility – will inflate clubs’ and agents’ rhetoric, site traffic and emotion. All of which in turn will raise the price – if not the value – of each contract. Silly-with-a-side-of-serious season.