Chelsea are probably offering to pay him the deferred wages Barcelona owes him. I don’t think Man U were.
Barcelona would just take the money and immediately use it to try and buy Bernardo Silva so the Virtuous Cycle can start anew.
Chelsea, after losing countless transfer targets and squad members to Barca’s reckless irresponsible spending, we’d like to buy two of your most expensive wage earners Barca:
so help me god if Chelsea bail Barca out I’m going to hold Popovio & Iron Mickey personally responsible and there will be hell to pay. Hell.
I’m going to gratuitously post the photo of Shaun in his Arsenal jacket as a sign of solidarity with the other London clubs
I wore it to the game and then gave it to my friend when I got home. He’s an Arsenal fan so it has a good home
While I'm all for strengthening the squad, I hear Mrs. De Jong is quite fond of Barcelona. I would hate to see them uprooted from the happy life they've made for themselves there. Also, seeing Barca go the way of Sri Lanka would give me a modicum of happiness.
tbf I hardly think of Yorkshire as some bastion of diversity but since when are rosters local so let’s be fair and say fuck Burnley
There is a wild disconnect between Barcelona spending so much money in the transfer market to demonstrate how wealthy they are, and how excited they are to be getting rid of FDJ. FDJ is literally the only world class player they had entering his prime. The rest are young very promising kids, and guys over 30s. So giving up future money to bring in Lewandowski and win now with midfield of Pedri, Gavi, Kessie, and Busquets. I guess they plan to get Silva. Maybe they are really banking on Xavi being the next Pep Guardiola. You can spin it both ways that Laporta believes in Xavi to give him his players, or that Laporta doesn't and will spend enough on players to where Xavi cant fail.
I didn’t watch Barca much last year but is FDJ really that good? Bernardo absolutely is but doesn’t forgive their business practices I’m still amazed by the fee Man City paid for him then only having like a 65m price tag this summer He’s twice the player Pogba ever was. Should be 100 mil, 150 if he was 25
if they werent looking at nine figures of wages and bonuses to frenkie over the next 4 years im sure they wouldnt be so desperate to offload him as it stands, he is the one guy that has a combination of high wages and high transfer fee that they can move (they obviously have other guys that would fetch a high fee, but not provide the wage relief at the same time) as for the age composition of the roster, theyve pretty clearly addressed that in the window - christensen, kessie, raphinha, and kounde are all 26 and under