Ben Haim to end Blues misery

On the move: Ben Haim will go to City

Tal Ben Haim will bring his miserable 12 months at Chelsea to an end next week and join Manchester City in a £5million deal.

The defender has agreed a four-year contract worth around £40,000-a-week and is looking forward to getting his career back on track.

Ben Haim, 26, joined on a free transfer from Bolton last summer, but struggled for form at the start of the campaign and barely featured once Avram Grant replaced Jose Mourinho as manager in September.

He made just 13 appearances and ended the campaign with a fine of two weeks' wages after criticising fellow Israeli Grant.

He said: "If I knew Grant was going to be the coach I would have signed for another club. It was [Jose] Mourinho who brought me here and no one except he and I know the conversation we had when he tried to sign me.

"The fact is while Mourinho was the coach, I played most of the games and people who know me know I would not have come here to be a reserve. I knew nothing good would come for me with Grant as Chelsea coach."

Ben Haim has been training with the squad but will miss next week's pre-season tour of China.

Another of Chelsea's signings from last summer, right-back Juliano Belletti, is wanted by Benfica on loan.

Belletti joined from Barcelona for £4m but the arrival of Jose Bosingwa from Porto for £16.2m in May means he is surplus to requirements.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in