Jose Mourinho has said Chelsea would have been addressing a dressing room revolt soonest; were it to have concured with Luke Shaw’s excessive wage demands.
Manchester United beat the Stamford Bridge outfit to the 19-year-old left-back’s penmanship. Despite pressure from family, who are Chelsea supporters, Shaw signed for United from Southampton in a deal worth an initial £27m with a reported weekly wage of £130,000 a week.
The Portuguese boss, fresh from his pre-season jibe at Arsenal concerning the relative ease with which he persuaded Cesc Fabregas, said the ‘Blues’ had to look elsewhere due of Shaw’s wage demand.
“It (signing Shaw) would’ve killed immediately our balance and we couldn’t allow that,” Mourinho said.
“If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead.
“We would have killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in our dressing room.”
Midfielder Eden Hazard, 22, and striker Fernando Torres, 29, are reportedly Chelsea’s highest earners on weekly wages of £185,000 and £170,000 with three and two years left in their respective contracts.
However, the England full-back’s wage is just a fraction of the reported £300,000-a-week new deal signed by Wayne Rooney earlier in the year, which makes him the highest paid in the Premier League, or the £225,000 his partner Robin van Persie earns per week.
Moreover, Shaw was good value for the money- in the absence of Patrice Evra who joined Juventus this week- as the ‘Red Devils’ put seven past Major League Soccer (MLS) club LA Galaxy in new manager Louis van Gaal’s first pre-season outing, but Mourinho insists many eyebrows would have been raised at such spendthrift agreement back at the West London club.
“When you pay that much to a 19-year-old-a good player, fantastic player-… the next day, we would have had players knocking on our our door,” he opined.
“They would have been saying. ‘How is it possible I play 200 games for this club, won this and that, yet a 19-year-old comes here and gets more than I get?”
Chelsea ended up recruiting Brazilian Filipe Luis from Atletico Madrid instead.
Mourinho added: “I don’t criticise another club for paying it. They (United) can pay what they want. I don’t have any comment about it. But for my club we can say it would be very negative for us, especially when we can say Filipe is much less expensive. Sometimes you have to make decisions.”
