Chelsea will lose Callum Hudson-Odoi unless they talk football, not finance

Despite no longer being the most freely-spending team in the Premier League, Chelsea still think they can buy their way out of trouble. With a team of finance people making decisions undiluted by a footballing mind, they think £100,000 a week will satisfy Callum Hudson-Odoi.

When all you have is a front office and a banker in the technical area, every problem looks like a wire transfer waiting to happen. Callum Hudson-Odoi’s representatives could not possibly be more clear about what the young Englishman wants the most at this stage of his career: regular starting minutes in a top division club competing for multiple trophies. A No. 10 jersey, if one became available at such a club, would signal the commitment he is looking for.

Bayern Munich understand this. They have football minds to spare at every level of that club. Chelsea do not know what to make of this. They have business people who think a check can solve most problems, and a bigger check can solve the rest.

The Evening Standard reports Chelsea have raised their offer to £100,000 a week, up from the £85,000 a week they offered Hudson-Odoi in January at the peak of Bayern’s interest. Nothing indicates Hudson-Odoi will be any more interested in the extra £15,000 a week than he was in the first £85,000, as it does not address his actual desires.

For most clubs, a contract of this amount – particularly for a player his age – would be a sign of intent and commitment. Most clubs would not give a teenager that much money not to play him.

But most clubs are not Chelsea.

Chelsea have no issue paying relatively large sums of money to keep a player they have minimal or moderate intentions of playing. Chelsea are hoarders. Having the players is more important than using the players, especially when those players are young and can still be loaned out to help the club cover their wages.

Whether or not the club is thinking on these lines, it is completely plausible they would sign Hudson-Odoi to a lucrative extension and then immediately shop for a club to take him on loan so they can zero out his wage bill. If Bayern were willing to pay a £35 million and then pay him a comparable salary, in Chelsea’s way of thinking, they are offering the German club a bargain by letting Hudson-Odoi go there for a loan fee and his wages.

Callum Hudson-Odoi’s situation is an interesting reverse of what Chelsea went through with Dominic Solanke.

Solanke demanded a wage packet well below what the Blues are now offering Hudson-Odoi. The club would not meet his demands because he had done so little to justify his ask. Solanke had about one-third as many minutes as a U18 as Hudson-Odoi and about the same number of U23 minutes. But Solanke had played only one game for 17 minutes with the first team. Hudson-Odoi is up to 23 appearances and just under 1,000 minutes.

Solanke had much weaker standing to ask for less money than Chelsea are offering Hudson-Odoi. Because Chelsea refused to pay him what he wanted, Solanke left.

Now Hudson-Odoi has more standing to ask for some amount of money, but he is not. Or, if he is, it is not the fulcrum of the negotiation. Yet the lesson Chelsea seemed to have learned from the Solanke situation is if a youth player wants to leave it must be because he wants more money, therefore if they want Hudson-0doi to stay they have to pay him more.

This particular contortion also requires them to overlook anything they could have learned from the recent diaspora of young players who know they are not at Callum Hudson-Odoi’s level but still want to leave for the exact same reason as him.

Chelsea are in a classic frozen negotiation, where neither party is offering what the other most wants because at least one party does not understand or value the other’s desire. The club cannot understand why playing minutes would be the go / no-go point for a young player, particularly when weighed against the riches on offer. Chelsea also don’t understand that the riches they offer are no longer as unique as they were 10 or 15 years ago. Many clubs pay as much as Chelsea do, and they give regular starts to those players to whom they pay that amount. They think money solves all, and only they have it. They are doubly wrong.

For his part, Hudson-Odoi does not share the club’s perspective on how great it would be to have him sat on the bench and maybe go out on loan for the next few years. Rightly so.

Because Chelsea are 500 days removed from having a football mind at the negotiating table they cannot approach this negotiation on the terms that will bring it to a conclusion.

Bayern Munich knows exactly what Hudson-Odoi is saying, why he is saying it and what value it holds for him. If Chelsea want to hold on to Hudson-Odoi and any other young player, they need to hire someone who speaks football as fluently as their players and the other clubs in Europe do.