I thought the latest quotes from Klopp is in line with what I think the club will do regarding Jude. We are not buying him, at least not at that price, not in a bidding war. That boat has sailed, and thankfully not the only one that can be great for us, thanks to the principles we built our recruiting upon.
"I heard a little bit of discussion here and there, he’s a young player with a lot of potential. If he was already scoring 40 goals in Spain or whatever, he would’ve been unaffordable.
“In this kind of thing, it’s all about timing, getting the boys in the right moment where they’re not already scoring 55 goals a season.”
The public statements from Benfica is that they are reluctant to sell, but at the same time resigned to him leaving in this window.
I think there is a benefit to a club who wants to land Bellingham with Enzo not moving this window. Less than a move putting a marker down for what the fee would need to be, taking an alternative off the table will make it harder to bluff with Dortmund, so hopefully Chelsea get too caught up in trying to be cute with their offer rather than just meeting the clause and leave him on the market until the summer
I would think bids probably have been considered but may not go further than that because the asking prices we are hearing from potential targets may be too high with little sign there is wiggle room when it comes to negotiations.
Our squad have largely returned from injury. Our primary target is Bellingham, so any deal has to ensure it doesn’t leave us short should we be the favoured bidders for him. In the meantime we’ve picked up Gakpo which has mopped up a lot of the cash we would have had to hand.
Evidently I’m not sure we can afford Bellingham if this is what we are scraping together, we will need two in my view this summer.
Unless with the signing of Gakpo we are going to the 4-2-4-1 or variation of. I just hope we aren’t going down the route of eggs all in one basket of reliance on Keita only to rush the day before the window closes.