Cahill set to accept 'low' Chelsea pay

  

Chelsea are hopeful of completing the deal for Bolton Wanderers' Gary Cahill today following delays over the buying club's insistence that new financial fair play regulations (FFP) mean they are prepared to pay him a relatively low – by their standards – £50,000 a week.

It has meant a longer than usual negotiation with Cahill and his agent, John Seasman, who had been taken aback by Chelsea's original offer and Andre Villas-Boas's announcement at the end of last month that the two parties were "miles apart". The club agreed a fee of around £6m with Bolton long ago but wages have taken much longer.

Chelsea regard their £50,000-a-week opening offer as the way forward. With the pressure of complying with FFP, introduced from last summer, the club told Cahill that the days of them handing out contracts in the £90,000-plus-a-week category to anything other than the biggest stars are over.
In the past, it has been the negotiations with the selling club that have proved the sticking point in Chelsea transfer sagas – such as the protracted negotiations with Lyons for Michael Essien and later Florent Malouda – but with Cahill it has been the issue of his wages.

Chelsea are not prepared to return to the days when big contracts were a matter of course even for those players who were not considered integral to the team. The club went through a big clear-out of high earners when they released the likes of Michael Ballack, Juliano Belletti, Deco and Joe Cole.


Recent additions to the squad, such as Oriol Romeu and Juan Mata, have been placed on a new, more modest pay scale, with the recognition that the club have to make inroads into the huge wage bill, £172m in the last annual accounts. Frank Lampard and John Terry – who earn around £150,000 a week – are both on deals signed in the days when the club were more willing to pay big money to keep their biggest names.

However, there is no prospect of either of those players being offered new deals at comparative rates when their current contracts expire – Lampard's in the summer of next year and Terry's a year later in 2014. The club are still battling against a perception within the game that they will hand out the kind of lucrative contracts they once did. They have also found their supremacy in the market for academy players challenged by Manchester City.

Chelsea have allowed the French winger Gaël Kakuta to go on loan at French Ligue 1 club Dijon. He has had two loan spells in the Premier League already, first with Fulham and then with Bolton, with whom he spent the first half of the season.

Daniel Sturridge is back in training after an injury that has kept him out of Chelsea's last two games against Wolves and Portsmouth. Terry said that he would be fit for Saturday's game against Sunderland, despite having hurt his knee in a collision with a goalpost.

Mancini breaks ranks to criticise Liverpool over Suarez race case

 

City manager insists Reds should have said sorry... and T-shirts were a bad idea

Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini said yesterday that Liverpool should have apologized immediately for Luis Suarez's use of the word "negro" and admitted a mistake, rather than defend him by wearing T-shirts bearing his name.

Mancini became the first opposition manager to enter the treacherous territory of discussing Kenny Dalglish's conduct in the hugely controversial case which has dealt Suarez an eight-game ban and ruled him out of the two clubs' Carling Cup semi-final, with the first leg at the Etihad Stadium tonight. But he qualified his comments with an appreciation of the pressures Suarez would have faced against Manchester United on 15 October.

"Sometimes it can happen on the pitch, a situation like this," Mancini said. "It is important to apologise for what you did. Sometimes on the pitch you can do something that you don't want to do, because you are nervous, you don't think. I don't think Suarez is a racist. I think he made a mistake, probably, yes." Asked if Liverpool had made a mistake by deciding to wear T-shirts in support of Suarez last month, before the club's game at Wigan Athletic the night after FA independent regulatory commission found him guilty of abusing Patrice Evra, Mancini nodded. "Maybe, maybe this," he said.
Mancini said he had experienced similar problems with racism in his last year in Italy, in 2007-08 – a season when Mario Balotelli was racially abused by Juventus fans.

Though privately, some within Anfield now agree with Mancini's contention that a rapid, diplomatic apology for any unintentional damage done by Suarez might have prevented the escalating furore which has damaged Liverpool, his comments are unlikely to be welcomed and they may well draw opprobrium from some on Merseyside. The issue has created such unbridled tribalism that the "comment" option on some Independent website articles on the topic has been withdrawn out of necessity in recent weeks.

But Mancini has a habit of speaking on any topic put to him and he certainly demonstrated an awareness of what Suarez was up against that day, in a spat with Evra which began with the Frenchman's abusive Spanish term "concha de tu hermana" which translates as a term of abuse for a recipient's sister. Mancini said he had experienced "everything, in 20 years, everything [on a football pitch.] I didn't cry for this on the pitch because I repeat I have my opinion that on the pitch everything can happen because you don't think, because you are tired, because you are stupid, you are young, for many reasons." Asked about the worst abuse he has delivered, Mancini replied: "I said some things but not important things like racist words."

Mancini, who is likely to be without David Silva for tonight's first leg because of the Spaniard's long-standing ankle problem, was angered to learn that the Football Association had rejected his club's appeal against Vincent Kompany's four-game ban after his dismissal against Manchester United. Privately, the City manager is deeply unhappy about the post-match comments of Sir Alex Ferguson, who suggested Kompany has form for two-footed challenges, considering this an attempt to influence City's appeal.

The United response has left Mancini harbouring a desire to beat United to the title before the two Manchester clubs meet in the league at the Etihad Stadium in April. Though the City manager voiced indifference about the Carling Cup yesterday, the FA Cup defeat appears to have sharpened his desire to beat Liverpool and take a huge stride to claiming a trophy, thus striking an early blow in the struggle for supremacy with United.

He may well not go into the transfer market this month, though, with Stefan Savic and Joleon Lescott expected to hold the fort during Kolo Touré's absence at the African Cup of Nations, and provided an indication yesterday that his call for another new signing this month had not gone down well at City.
"Every time that I talk about this I have a problem... but when I said this, it is not because I want to criticise the club," he said. Mancini is likely to have Mario Balotelli back tonight, with Edin Dzeko on the bench.