Michy Batshuayi to Chelsea: Blues make £33.1m bid after having second thoughts over Alvaro Morata and Romelu Lukaku

1/13
Simon Johnson29 June 2016

Chelsea have made a late move to beat Tottenham, West Ham and Crystal Palace to the signing of striker Michy Batshuayi.

Standard Sport understands a £33.1million offer was lodged with Marseille yesterday amid concerns at Chelsea over the lack of signings this summer.

Crystal Palace agreed a £31.8m fee for Batshuayi at the start of the week but the 22-year-old Belgium international has been holding out for a bigger side.

West Ham have expressed an interest, although Tottenham appeared to be the favourites to secure his signature yesterday.

But now Chelsea have decided to enter the fray and it is believed Batshuayi has already spoken to his Belgium team-mates about the prospect of moving to Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea are prepared to hand him a five-year contract and he wants around £70,000-a-week.

While a medical is unlikely before Belgium’s Euro 2016 quarter-final against Wales on Friday — he is due to speak at a press conference to preview the game this evening — the deal is set to be completed next week.

Batshuayi celebrates after scoring Belgium's second goal against Hungary on Sunday Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Marseille are under pressure to sell their biggest asset by Tuesday as they must raise £21m to avoid a possible transfer embargo by the DNCG, which regulates the finances of football clubs in France. They are looking for as high a price as possible because Standard Liege included a 35 per cent sell-on clause when Batshuayi joined Marseille for £4.5m in 2014.

Chelsea turned to the forward, who has 33 goals in 78 games for the French side, after having second thoughts over prime targets Alvaro Morata and Romelu Lukaku due to the prices being demanded for them.

Chelsea had hoped to buy Morata for around £40m after Real Madrid triggered a buy-back clause with Juventus to sign him for £23m last week.

However, after impressing at Euro 2016 with three goals, Real Madrid have upped Morata’s value to £57m. Meanwhile, Everton want £65m for Lukaku, who Chelsea sold to them for only £28m two years ago.

Chelsea 2015/16 Player Ratings

1/24

New coach Antonio Conte, who will start work once Italy’s campaign at Euro 2016 is over, wants to play with two strikers next term.

Chelsea will buy at least one more should Diego Costa leave for Atletico Madrid but they want to keep the Spain international and pair him with Batshuayi up front.

In the unlikely event Costa departs, Chelsea will make another move for Morata or Lukaku.

With the players not involved in Euro 2016 due to report for pre-season training in a fortnight, the Blues have yet to sign anyone in the window.

Standard Sport understands Chelsea put talks with Roma on hold after having two bids rejected, the last of which was worth £27.4m.

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