Latest: Romano reports Chelsea to pay just 60% of summer’s biggest transfer up front | OneFootball

With the season coming to an end, Fabrizio Romano is coming out of his cryo-chamber and preparing for a long summer ahead.

It looks like the biggest Chelsea saga of the summer is already well underway. Estevao Willian is coming to town, and over the course of the next few weeks and months every last detail of the deal is going to be scrutinised through the lens of Romano Tweets updating us on the deal.

What we know so far is that Willian has a €55m release clause, but Chelsea are going to end up paying a lot more than that. Much as they did in the Enzo Fernandez deal and the Nicolas Jackson transfer which Romano mentions in his Tweet, the Blues are going to pay more than the clause in return for being able to spread out the payments.

In this case, Romano says our new bid is already above the €55m floor:

“Chelsea’s new bid for Estevão will be in excess of €55m release clause,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Chelsea will proceed like that to get better payment terms + more than 40% of the potential final fee in add-ons. Chelsea already did the same with Nico Jackson’s release clause last summer.”

A hard deal to judge

As we’ve written before, it’s very difficult to know what to think of this deal without more information on Chelsea’s overall picture this summer. We certainly wouldn’t recommend them blowing their whole budget on a 17 year old who can’t even play for us for at least 12 months, but equally if they’re confident they have the funds to improve other areas of the team regardless, Willian looks a next level talent who could end up being a steal.

Paying more than the release clause is also a tactic we can get behind if it leads to us getting a better deal overall.