Chelsea are reportedly close to signing Barcelona misfit Philippe Coutinho during the upcoming summer transfer window – as per reports.
The midfielder has been a major flop for Barcelona ever since he moved to the La Liga and right now he is out on loan to Bayern Munich.
But with the Bavarians having no intentions of making the deal permanent, Philippe Coutinho will return back to Spain in the summer but as per reports, Chelsea want to sign him on yet another loan deal.
Right now, the Blues are the favourites to land the player on a loan spell but Barcelona want to add a buying clause at the end of the contract tenure and this is where the problems are arising.
At first, the rumours suggested Barcelona wanted around £85 million for the player but the latest updates claim this asking price has now plummeted to around £57 million which is a great bit of news for Chelsea.
But it seems like the Blues now have made a weird request asking Barcelona to increase the asking price to £78 million.
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While at first, this might seem a foolish move since any club would want to pay less when signing a player but this decision from Chelsea makes a lot of sense.
Originally Barcelona are willing to let Philippe Coutinho leave for £57 million but in the loan deal they want to add a mandatory buying clause but as things stand Chelsea do not want such an arrangement.
And this is why the Premier League club wants the transfer price to be raised so that the purchase clause becomes optional.
We can understand why Chelsea have made such a call given Philippe Coutinho has been really poor since he moved out of Liverpool a couple of seasons ago and right now Lampard is not too confident about the player retaining his previous form.
So instead of committing £57 million for a flop, the Chelsea boss is willing to take a gamble for one season and if the player does turn out to be excellent he will not hesitate to splash extra cash.
