Said all along people should only really be paying attention to Ornstein and Joyce.
Romano is clearly being fed everything from a Chelsea perspective and taking anything from Sky Sports as gospel is foolish when they clearly have a vested interest in manipulating betting markets.
The fact that there are innumerable āChelsea will increase their bidā stories in the press overnight shows Chelseaās PR team is working overtime to keep the story alive. There is no such bid yet. It very much looks like Chelsea cannot match that number, but Brighton cannot yet force the transfer through because āthe Chelsea bid is comingā.
Chelseaās play here seems to be to try to get LFC to withdraw the bid and move on, allowing them to pick up the player at the Ā£100M they offered earlier. I have no idea why we would let that happen.
Another reminder here that Sky Sports pushed the line that we couldnāt afford Szoboslai the day before we signed him.
There has to be a point where Brighton say āPut up or shut upā. In fact, Iām amazed (not to mention disappointed) that they have waited this long.
Because heās not some collectable being sent for appraisal. He has a say in whether he comes or not. If he wants to hold on to see what the outcome of Chelseaās intentions are then thatās up to him.
Or weāve snuck him up north without anyone knowing and this afternoon the announcement will drop.
Yeah, I donāt follow the ITK up and down so closely, but I got the impression he was a little smarter than to go all in on something like this, showing his hand to everybody.
And what exactly would that look like? Clubs cannot really force through a transfer. Caicedoās agent(s) are clearly willing to string this along, and likely will be so until Chelsea demonstrably cannot move ahead. Right now sounds like they are playing silly buggers trying to offer players Brighton doesnāt want, baseball-style.
Romano has no real stories of his own, heās a slave to his paymaster.
He will say exactly what Boehly wants him to. If he doesnāt, heās left out the circle.
I rather thought the whole out of the bid/auction midnight deadline was that it was decided then and the best bid was accepted and no more bids would be accepted. NOT that one of the teams could go ā we didnāt win. Oh, that wasnāt my best offer after allā¦.ā
But thereās probably a reason Iām not negotiating transfers for anyone.
āWe have a concrete offer of Ā£111m on the table. You have 24 hours to top it, or we are closing negotiations.ā
Not difficult.
Sky sports and now less reliable than Internet gossip pages.
and then what? They say āwe are accepting LFCās offerā, Caicedoās people say we are waiting for Chelsea before we do any medical or discuss a contract.
That is basically where we have been for two days
Thats already supposed to have been done with once we outbid Chelsea
Brighton say we will not entertain any offers from Chelsea. They had their chance, so you either negotiate with Liverpool or your client stays here. And if he does stay here, heāll rot in the reserves.
Not going to sound so āfinalā when youāve only just told same team that their previous offer was to be their best and finalā¦
Effectively Brighton have made it clear that they want the player sold so if he doesnāt want to go to Liverpool they are forced to invite Chelsea back. Ultimately their manager may end up costing them big time as Moises has probably been told he just has to wait for Brighton to blink again (which heās probably been told theyāve already done once by inviting Chelsea to bid again) and heāll get the move he wants. Boy is the very opposite of Jude Bellingham and how I wish we could have got him instead!
Are we there, anywhere, yet? Where are we actually?
A club like Brighton cannot afford to tank a Ā£100m player for a season.
They did the auction to draw all parties out and get concrete ideas of who would pay what. If Chelsea top our bid and thatās where Caicedo wants to go then theyāve no loyalty to us that would make them say Chelsea missed their chance. Brighton will rightly do whatās best for them.
Ultimately if Caicedo digs his heels in and Chelsea say their best and final is Ā£100m then theyād rather take that than keep Caicedo. They also canāt force Caicedo to come here if heās dead set on Chelsea.
Thatās what I suspect is happening. Chelsea are focussing on getting Caicedo fully bought in to them, then theyāll deal with Brighton. Weāve got the deal in place with Brighton but, we need to get him to buy into us.
ā¦and Chelsea makes an offer next Tuesday, but Brighton makes a stand on principle that will cost them 10ās of millions to make a point to a player they already said they were ready to move out? Why on earth would they do that, other than to satisfy petulant LFC fans?
