RMC: Wolves’ Pedro Neto close to signing with Chelsea

With the club working earnestly and close to a deal to finalize a transfer for Bournemouth striker Dominic Solanke, attention has now turned to Tottenham Hotspur’s attempt to sign a new right-sided attacker, preferably of the “dribbly winger” variety. Spurs have been closely linked with a move for Wolves’ Pedro Neto pretty much all summer and that’s more or less who we all assumed the club would go for here in the last couple weeks of the transfer winger.

Welp, maybe not. According to Fabrice Hawkins of RMC (and “corroborated” by Fabrizio Romano), Neto is now apparently close to signing with Chelsea.

Lol… lmao.

So with the caveat that I really have no idea what the hell Chelsea are trying to do this summer (or in general, actually), is this actually a blessing in disguise? Pedro Neto is absolutely a player with the skillset who could cook under Ange Postecoglou’s tactics, and there are very good reasons why Ange and the club were looking to bring him in.

The problem is that the guy just can’t stay healthy. He missed 17 matches last season with two different hamstring injuries, was out the same number the previous season with a bad ankle, and missed the entire first half of 2021-22 to injury as well. Neto’s great… if he actually plays and he all too frequently does not.

As someone said in Carty Free’s chat in the wake of this news, “This is like getting gazumped for Willian except if he was broken half the time and not as good.”

But let’s go back to Chelsea a second because I still have no idea what their transfer policy is or whether their moves are contingent on a random number generator or what. This is a club that has been buying young talent seemingly at random, has a hugely bloated squad (including seven goalkeepers!!) and only saved itself from a point deduction for PSR issues this summer by selling its women’s team to itself in a brazen scheme that could be retroactively nixed by the league. And their big move is to go for Jorge Mendes client Pedro Neto for a fee reportedly of £60m? Whoof. All right then! I, a simple blogger, clearly do not understand.

So if this is correct, Spurs will need to pivot. Or perhaps they already have — we don’t know yet but we might find out very soon. The Athletic’s Sensible Transfers video pod recently suggested Spurs should target PSV’s Johann Bakayoko for their dribbly direct wide guy, and that’s hard to argue against. Others have mooted Porto’s 21-year-old winger Francisco Conceicao (the green bars!!) as a potential option. What is very likely is that Tottenham already have their list of targets locked in and they’re working on the next steps right now. We just may not know who’s on it until we get the news drop that they’re working on a signing.

Update: Ornstein’s got it now too. €60m + 3m. Wow… just, wow.

Update 2: According to this from an Express and Star reporter (which is the Wolves regional paper), Tottenham’s offer included Oliver Skipp going the other way.