Why didn’t Chelsea call JTs bluff?

By: Rob | July 23rd, 2009

So it looks like John Terry is about ready to tell the world, that actually he was staying at Stamford Bridge all along. What’s bought this on? Well Chelsea are apparently deep in negotiations to give the England Captain a nice new fat contract. So just as I originally suggested, Terry was using Man City to get himself a bigger deal at his current one.

So why didn’t Chelsea just call his bluff and accept the £40m bid?

Lets be honest, straight off the bat, Terry is not worth that much money to anyone. He’s suffered alot from injuries the past few years, is getting older, and arguably isn’t even as good as Rickie Carvalho, who sits despondant on the Chelsea bench.

Had Chelsea accepted the offer, one of two things would have happened. Terry would have admitted he didn’t want a move in the first place and had to declare that he always wanted to stay at Chelsea, or they would have got 40 million quid for him.

Instead they couldn’t hold their nerve and will now be paying him even more than they were before. Seems a bit crazy to me.

I appreciate what Terry represents to the club, especially as captain. He is along with Lampard the face of the club for better or worse and a strong reminder of the Mourinho era. Maybe though, Chelsea need to try and move past their Jose complex. There have been a few occasions over the last few years where it has seemed they could do with moving on, as hard as that seems to be.

I also appreciate that Roman doesn’t need the £40m, and it almost means as little to him as it does to Manchester City. But having said that, he seems less and less willing to put big money into the club for transfers anymore, so if he could have just taken that £40m and chucked it Carlo’s way, he could have started building a team himself out of it, instead of trying to force a team out of the players Scolari and Hiddink left behind.

Chelsea do need to restablish themselves and with United seemingly weakened (Valencia and Owen in for Ronaldo?) now might be the time for them to reclaim their position at the top. But only if they stop fantasising about the Special One era.

From City’s perspective, Terry would have been a great marquee name, but its no big loss for them if Terry decides to stay – they should have gone after Carvalho anyway. And they’ll probably get Lescott instead which isn’t bad. Things are looking quite good for City at the moment.