What to do with Costa ?

Reports are starting to be posted suggesting Costa is back / coming back / thinking of coming back, and making his peace, getting fit and hoping to be transferred in January.
What to do with him?
I hope if reports are true, we don't get the hump, but act like grown ups, get him fit and play him. I suspect both parties have everything to gain doing this and nothing to lose except a bit of pride. In the order of things, that's nothing to either side.

 

I agree. Get him back, get him fit. See no reason to start him though if he's just going to leave in 3 months, but does mean that we have him as an option off the bench at least.

 

Seems no one at Chelsea was listening to us as it appears he might now go to Turkey on loan. Waste of talent on all sides.

 

I think the whole thing has been very poorly handled on both sides. Conte should have sat him down and spoken to him about it and Costa shouldn't have splashed it all over the news.
Ultimately, Costa is worse off as he has no club and is now facing a battle to regain fitness during a World Cup year.

However, it does set a precedent we haven't seen at Chelsea before. Conte is unoquivocally in charge. What should we do with Costa? Get him fit and flog him to the highest bidder.

 

Fit and flog definitely. I believe ( that is if you can believe anything you read) that the loan is for either 6 months OR until January when he might / is / maybe / will be sold to Atletico, no doubt for a bargain basement figure for them. Hope this is the case as we have had a good relationship with Atletico up till now, and they unearth more winners than most.

 

It as definitely handled poorly.
Costa was making waves as early as last january about wanting out of Chelsea, for whatever reason.
Conte got sick of it and wanted him gone this summer.
But still, the stupid text message as soon as the season ended? What the **** was that? You shouldn't lay all your cards on the table like that.

As far as any club wanting to bid for Costa was concerned, he was our star, 20 goal a season, striker, who we wanted to keep at any cost.
Then we could have entertained bids northward of £50-60m for him, but no, coming out and saying "Yeah we don't want you, **** off!" is the most ridiculous tactic ever, they knew what Costa was like, of course he was going to run his mouth and tell all and sundry that we wanted rid! Did they expect him to keep it secret?

But then Costa loses all my sympathy by going AWOL and refusing to come back to Chelsea.
We should sue the **** out of him like we did with Mutu.

 

It's been a right mess and you suspect the only winners will be AM who will secure him for half his current market value in Jan, the earliest they could register him anyway.

Best we could hope for is some kind of first refusal / agreed price on Greizmann who will surely leave them in the summer.

All in all, fair play to Coutinho and Sanchez. Costa and Van Dyke's conduct looks very bad. Just hope we aren't paying for him to play 5 aside with his mates in Brazil.

 

Not so sure the conduct of Coutinho and Sanchez was that great either but Costas is definitely on another level.

Atletico have a number of players I'd take so I'd love some sort of part ex but I expect he'll leave in January for around 40M. Should be getting him fit before then though and have him in the squad.

 

Griezman would be handy !!!!!!!

 

To answer your original question, Alvaro is in need of a boot cleaner for club and country.

That will be a no brainer. But with our personnel acquisition team it will be no chance.

 

I think Costa got treated how he deserved to be treated, he was angling for a move in January for big bucks in China, which had the potential to put a dent in your title bid, as you didn't have another striker that could play his role if you lost him.

It was the middle of the season, the team was top of the table, and he was under contract. So I can fully understand why Conte has no time for him, and treated him the way he did.

There is obviously the option to bring him back into the set up until January, but I think that is more likely to have a negative impact on you than a positive one.

Morata is a better player than Costa for me anyways, as are quite a few other strikers in the PL. So aslong as Morata stays fit until January you shouldn't need Costa.

 

Looks like 50 m. Same we paid for Torres.

When Pogba & Lukaku are worth close to 100 m , this deal is a disgrace.

Hope our guys have a first refusal or something on few Atleti players.

 

We were never going to get more than that once Costa made that text from Conte public. (Which is why it was stupid of Conte to send it like that).
Its still more than we paid for him, and we got 2 titles out of his tenure, so I am not too fussed to be honest.
The difference between Lukaku and Costa is that Everton wanted to keep Lukaku, so Man United had to pay them enough to make the deal worthwhile, where as everyone knows Conte (and a lot of Chelsea fans) cannot wait to see the back of Costa, so that kinda hampers your bargaining position when selling him to other clubs (Plus Lukaku and Pogba are like 4 years younger than Costa, so will have more longevity)

 

Yeah, know age, resale, push for move etc etc. Still 50 m isn't good. And a disgrace to a direct opponent. For all its worth his goal may put us in Europa ffs

Roman should have let him rot in bench for 6 months especially being world cup year Diego doesnt have leverage.

Now he will have a field day against us in CL.

 

You do know he can't be registered until January don't you? Surely.

So he won't play against us in these C.L group games and the chances of both teams progressing to the knockouts and getting through round 16 and then drawing each other are slim. Don't worry about it until it happens.

 

As for the price, I don't think it's a bad deal given his age (and the summer fall out). He can't be compared to the transfer fees of players who are 5 years his junior and were at clubs that wanted to keep them.

Look at say Payet as a more obvious comparison. Payet wanted out, had one club in mind, refused to play etc and is of a similar age. Marseille paid 25m for him.

 

Ok forgot the ban. Good. No EL curse then.

Costa is more Torres than Payet.
Both times we only got burnt.
But why always us?? Roman signed up for providing hand outs??

We have WC leverage to use against Costa especially with Alavaro.

It is not black & white, you remember?

 

I think we've done well to get 57M for him.

I was expecting us to get closer to 40.

 

Yes we had leverage against Costa but not against Madrid. We can't force them to pay 100 million or whatever sum you think is right.

Chelsea and Costa were both in bad negotiating positions here and ultimately I think the deal is fair all around and we can all move on.

To make 20 million odd profit on a guy who has helped win us 2 titles isn't too shaby. We've done a lot worse with other strikers over the years (Torres, Sheva, Sutton etc).

 

True. Could have been worse. We can move on. But I would prefer first priority on Atleti players in the future.