It looks like even Chelsea’s never ending bank balance has a limit when it comes to buying players from one of their biggest rivals as they’ve told Arsenal that they will not be going above their current ?16m bid for outcast Ashley Cole. This may cause some problems for all concerned as Arsenal are demanding that Chelsea match their previous outlays on English players and stump up around ?25m to take the England left back off their hands.

Problems indeed. Arsenal don’t want a moody player on their hands causing trouble in the ranks as he doesn’t want to be there, Ashley Cole obviously doesn’t want to be there and really seems to fancy the big payday of a move to the Russian firm and Chelsea have to make a stand on transfer fees that they pay out to their rivals as they don’t want to pay too much and then see Arsenal use the money to strengthen and hurt their own prospects.

Who blinks first? Arsenal have threatened to field Cole in their Champion’s League match against Dinamo Zagreb in a fortnight if Chelsea don’t cough up thereby making him ineligible for any other club if he does move after that. Chelsea have told them that they won’t be held to ransom for their previous transfer exuberance and as the only bidders for the player feel they are offering a reasonable deal.

It’s certainly an interesting one and we’ll get to see just who has the most bottle as it unfolds. Either way it’s not going to help the relationship between the two clubs as Chelsea find yet another Premiership foe to line up off the pitch againstand Arsenal find that even at the top of the food chain there is always someone bigger ready to try and gobble you up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 9:10 am and is filed under Arsenal, Chelsea. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.