WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Having initially chosen to stay with Atlético Madrid through a warped sense of loyalty, many people are of the opinion that Antoine Griezmann will move to Manchester United in the January transfer window.

Those opinions will have been strengthened by the recent news that his buy-out clause has been halved to €100 million. This is because, in January, Atlético Madrid will be able to buy players again and will also be in a position to be able to replace Griezmann.

There is no guarantee, however that the player will sign for Manchester United because, by then, Mourinho or his underworked and overpaid scouts, may have identified an alternative.

In fact, the deal would probably already be dead in the water had United managed to sign Ivan Perisić from Inter Milan. There would still have been a possibility that Mourinho would sign another wide player but it would have been unlikely.

Now, although there has been no direct link made between him and United, Thomas Lemar of Monaco has emerged as a younger, and potentially better, prospect than Griezmann.

He has broken into the France national team at the age of 22 and has now made seven appearances which have included him scoring two goals against the Netherlands in a World Cup qualifier.

Having recently rejected the “opportunity” to sign for Arsenal due to, reportedly, their non-appearance in the Champions League for the next two years, (unless stubborn old fool leaves before then), he is open to a move to the Premier League with Liverpool supposedly interested. It is this interest from Merseyside that means Dithering Ed Woodward will have to act quickly in January to secure his signing as we are sure that, given a straight choice, Old Trafford would be his preferred destination.

Chelsea

Having transformed an OK transfer window into a less-than-OK one, Chelsea will be holding an inquest into what went wrong.

In fairness, they did bring in their second choice centre forward Alvaro Morata as well as Antonio Rüdiger, Willy Caballero, Davide Zappacosta and Danny Drinkwater. However, with the possible exception of Morata, these could hardly be considered marquee signings!

Of far more concern to the manager, the board and the fans will be the ones they didn’t sign and the reasons for missing out on them.

Why did they fail to sign Romelu Lukaku when they were favourites to do so? Why did Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain choose Liverpool over the blues? What made Ross Barkley change his mind about going to Stamford Bridge? Fernando Llorente preferred to sign for Tottenham Hotspur and Kyle Walker chose Manchester City.

These are all players one would expect to be happy to join Chelsea so what is the problem? Is it the old “union” mentality whereby the players in question feel they have an affinity with Diego Costa and don’t like what has happened to him? If that is the case then Antonio Conte, entirely unintentionally, is the problem.

It’s possible, because all the players who didn’t join Chelsea are English-based players so would be well aware of the Costa saga and will have made up their own minds, rightly or wrongly, about who is to blame.

In fairness, only Ross Barkley chose to stay with a club who would be considered “smaller” than Chelsea. All of the others joined clubs who can also offer them Champions League football and Walker and Lukaku went to bigger clubs.

So maybe it would be fairer to say that Chelsea only missed out on three players but even that is too many. A club such as they should be expecting to sign one out of every two targets and, when the competition doesn’t involve either of the Manchester clubs, they should get EVERY target.

Hopefully for the fans, the inquest will get to the bottom of the problem and it will be rectified in time for January or, at the latest, next summer.