Fabrizio Romano reveals Mauricio Pochettino urged Chelsea not to go mad in transfer market for PSG target Manuel Ugarte
According to journalist Fabrizio Romano, Mauricio Pochettino advised Chelsea not to match Paris Saint-Germain’s bid to sign Manuel Ugarte.
Due to their shared interest in signing the highly regarded midfielder, PSG and Chelsea entered a bidding war to land the 22-year-old. However, PSG were able to raise their offer, which caused the Blues to withdraw from the competition to sign the former Sporting CP midfielder.
The Ligue 1 team made an initial bid of roughly €5 million (£4.3 million) but then increased it to €10 million (£8.6 million), which caused the Blues to give up on trying to sign the midfielder.
Nonetheless, the Blues’ focus remains to sign a top defensive midfielder for the next season. And Romano has now revealed on his Youtube channel that Pochettino also suggested the club not go mad over Ugarte’s signing, as he said:
“Pochettino was involved in conversations with the Chelsea board all through Ugarte’s negotiations and agreed with Chelsea against matching PSG’s proposal to avoid creating problems in the dressing room. Poch suggested not doing any madness in general on the market.”
Pochettino made the right decision in this case because spending this much money on a player who is still developing makes sense. If we had signed him, it would have created a poor atmosphere in the locker room because other players could have then felt they could bargain for a better contract at the club if they had so much money to spare in the market.
We made the right choice not to counter PSG’s offer for Ugarte since doing so would have resulted in further irresponsible expenditure, despite the young player’s potential.
Poch is known for his sensible approach to management. We can expect him to bring an end to the transfer madness we saw in the first two windows under Todd Bohley.
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That being said, he would be wise enough to understand that the club’s funds should be majorly focused towards devising a new plan for their centre-forward problems.