Romano explains why Chelsea missed out on £35m Michael Olise signing

Fabrizio Romano says Crystal Palace are not happy with Chelsea’s pursuit of Michael Olise

According to Fabrizio Romano, Crystal Palace were left discontent with Chelsea’s approach for Michael Olise as the Blues triggered the midfielder’s release clause.

The former academy player already agreed on personal terms to join the West Londoners, and the Blues were pushing for a move. But Palace have now renewed his contract at Selhurst Park to end any links of a summer transfer.

They were dissatisfied with how the Blues started negotiations with them after the Blues activated the 21-year-old Palace. They felt Chelsea ‘crossed the line’ in terms of transfer etiquette.

Chelsea wants to add more depth to their right-wing and saw Olise as an option who could occupy that space and can also play in midfield. Romano confirmed this in his exclusive Caught Offside column and said:

“Chelsea keep being busy, and it’s true that Crystal Palace are not entirely happy with how the Blues have approached the Michal Olise deal. But it’s also worth reiterating that Chelsea feels they did everything correctly, behaved fine, and did nothing wrong.” 

There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with what we did from the face of it, considering we activated his £35 million release clause in accordance with standard transfer protocol.

Since the aforementioned update, Romano has added that Crystal Palace threatened to take Chelsea to a tribunal, which put the Blues off his scent. It is baffling as to what went wrong. Perhaps the general public isn’t aware of the intricacies that went behind the scenes.

Even the player was open to a move and has snubbed Manchester City, which says a lot about our pull in the market. If we had the player on our side and a clause which we activated, there shouldn’t have been anything to stop us from getting the deal done. But it seems there was more to it than being made public to the fans.

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We have been going bonkers in the transfer market ever since Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital took over. Perhaps it is time to take a breather after this summer. We have signed a plethora of players on long contracts, so it must have been done with the future in mind. If we have to close the spending spree with one more attacking signing, Nottingham Forest’s Brennan Johnson would be a stunning alternative.