Antonio Conte has made his peace with Chelsea after their failure to sign Romelu Lukaku, with the head coach blaming the player and his agent, Mino Raiola, for the Everton striker’s impending transfer to Manchester United, which could be announced as early as today.

The Italian is understood to feel betrayed by Lukaku as the pair have spoken on several occasions this summer and the Italian had formed the impression that he had his heart set on returning to Stamford Bridge. Instead, the 24-year-old now appears destined to join United.

It is understood that Chelsea matched United’s initial £75million up-front offer for Lukaku, but were unwilling to meet the agent fee (£10million) being demanded by Raiola, which they believe has been pivotal in the Belgium striker’s apparent desire to move to Old Trafford.

While Chelsea’s £75 million offer for Lukaku was made prior to United and Everton coming to an agreement this week, it has been enough to placate Conte, who is frustrated at missing out on his primary summer transfer target.

Chelsea fear that Lukaku is being guided towards United by Raiola — who took Paul Pogba, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan to the club 12 months ago — because of the agent’s financial interests rather than the player’s sporting objectives. Chelsea have also suffered as a result of United’s willingness to offer Wayne Rooney — notionally valued at £10 million — to Everton as part of the deal, which when Lukaku’s easily attainable performance and appearance targets are achieved will take the value of the overall package to a world-record £100 million.

Not only that because there are very few top of the line strikers on the this window's market to begin with - Auba, Lukaku, Morata and Belotti.

Auba is a pacey striker who's already 28 and have probably the biggest wage demand (said to be 250,000 a week) with Dortmund also demanding a huge transfer fee.

Belotti is had a good season but still largely unproven as he's only just broken onto the scene this past season. With a 100M release clause on his head and him being a fiercely loyal Torino fan growing up, he has previously stated that he has no desire to leave this summer nor has Torino any will to sell him.

Morata is the likeliest option as an alternative to Lukaku as he's been demanding to leave for more first team football. Even though his goals per 90min statistic at Madrid is respectable, he's never been a high volume goal scorer in any season of his professional career. He was never a first choice at Juve nor at Madrid so track record wise he is still inferior to Lukaku adding to the fact that there's no telling if he will be able to adapt to the intensity of PL.

With Lukaku seemingly off the market now, prices of other strikers are only going to rise because of supply and demand. This only gives power to Madrid to hold firm onto their extremely high valuation of Morata.

One way to look at it is this might be a Chelsea board's PR move to basically tell Conte "Hey it's not our fault, it's all the greedy cunt Raiola's fault".

Emenalo might get a lot of stick on here but isn't it Marina G the one in charge of negotiations? This is more likely her fault if anything for being overconfident and dragging it for too long.

Actually it's better to sell Matic to them than them buying Dier/Fabinho.

This is why I don't get why Ox is desperate for leave Arsenal. He's been linked with Liverpool and Chelsea this summer, and at both clubs he will be a rotation option at best, the exact reason why he wants out.

His versatility and poor injury record means he will almost never be considered or be relied upon as a first choice starter at most top clubs.

Adam Leventhal‏
@AdamLeventhal

As I understand it, there is no buy back clause in Chalobah deal to Watford from Chelsea.

Reported by someone very reliable for Watford related news. Sources close to Chelsea however claim that there is. So who knows. Maybe we will find out in a few years time.

That is only half true. It's true that he is not the type that often creates something out of nothing, but one of his biggest strength is his ability to be involved in the buildup play. He is often credited for his work rate in the front line. While it's not realistic to expect him to dribble the ball past 2-3 players to score a goal, it's normal for him to dispossess a defender with his body strength and work rate which could turn into a goal scoring opportunity that should also count as creating something out of nothing.

I think you are misremembering your history. Sissoko was a last minute desperate deadline day transfer.

That amount seems too good to be true. Why would they stump up 50m for Matic when they wouldn't do less for Perisic?

What history tells us is Michy will be underutilized then sold to another club where he would do well. This is followed by a big money move either back to Chelsea or a rival club.

I think both if both are attainable. They are going all in this season after Verratti's cry for a move to Barca to win CL.

Messi won his first Ballon d'Or when he was just 22. Neymar is already 25. Messi is 30 this year and by the looks of it, could easily play at the top level until he is 33-34. Is Neymar willing to wait till 29-30 when he is already past his prime?

There seems to be a common misconception that Neymar is still a youngster still developing under the wings of Messi. No, his time is now if he ever wants to make his mark like Messi did. You could even argue that he is running out of time as Neymar is more reliant on his pace than Messi was. He probably only has a few years left at the peak of his game. Realistically, I don't see him winning Ballon d'Or even if he moves to PSG, but I certainly won't fault him for showing ambition.

This post has been edited by Cloud0890: Jul 23 2017, 12:38 PM

To be fair, Sigurdsson might not be worth that amount for other clubs but he is definitely worth that for Swansea, more than 50M even. The money Swansea will lose from getting relegated will be far more than 50M and Sigurdsson is a player who is capable of saving them from that fate single-handedly.

I don't think Sergi Roberto even wants to move. The only reason he would leave Barca is to play regular football in his preferred midfield position. He has no reason to leave now when Barca has finally signed a RB to move him into midfield especially when Conte likely intends on playing him as a RWB which was the only reason linking him away with a move from Barca.