Romelu Lukaku joined Manchester United in 2017 for a whopping £75 million fee (per the BBC). However, it was very almost Chelsea paying out for the striker after making an approach for him.
For Chelsea, this would have been the same striker that they allowed to leave the club for just £28 million (per the BBC) to join Everton in 2014.
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Picture the scene now, it’s 2024, Chelsea approach AC Milan to sign their England international centre back, Fikayo Tomori. But the Blues have been priced out of the deal by the £85 million valuation set for the Serie A regular.
It actually isn’t too far fetched, and my point is here and now, that Chelsea will end up regretting inserting the option to buy in Tomori’s loan contract to Milan this season, just like they constantly regret selling Kevin De Bruyne, Mo Salah, and Romelu Lukaku.
I mean, why did they even need to include it? It has no benefits and makes no sense from their point of view. Milan could land a bargain, Chelsea could lose a top player.
Of course, not all youngsters can make it at the club, and there are circumstances where it might be impossible to keep hold of them, or they are desperate to leave to get more game time. I understand that.
But with Tomori, Chelsea went backwards.
I remember doing centre back polls at the start of Frank Lampard’s spell as Chelsea boss, Tomori would ALWAYS come out on top as the highest rated defender that we had. He was even playing regularly for Chelsea and looked indispensable.
Sure, he had areas to improve, but not many players don’t. Tomori was already showing signs of becoming a top class defender for Chelsea and for England, being capped by them as well.
But for whatever the reason, he demised at Chelsea and Lampard stopped selecting him.
However, this is where the problem is – tunnel vision by the board.
They looked at the situation and clearly either didn’t expect Milan to even think about paying the 28 millions euro fee to sign him, or assumed he simply would not be good enough or play enough for Milan to even want to think about the fee.
But he is, and he’s doing more than that. The general consensus now is that Milan absolutely love Tomori and rate him highly. It looks inevitable that they will trigger the option to buy this summer, and Chelsea will lose another potential star.
We will regret this decision, Tomori will go on to be a real top defender.
