Deadline day 2008 was a big night for Chelsea fans.
We all thought we were about to sign Robinho from Real Madrid. The rumours had been flying around for a while, the club was still spending big money on world class players regularly, and the Brazil star was available.
In fact, not only did we end up not signing him, he ended up at our rivals, Man City. The reason? We jumped the gun and started selling shirts with his name on it before the deal was done, irritating Real Madrid. That’s according to the player, at least:
“My goal was to go to Chelsea. But Real Madrid ended badly with them,” the former AC Milan man said.
“They didn’t like Chelsea selling shirts with my name on them before the deal was concluded,” he explained.
If that’s true, that’s a real blunder from the club’s perspective.
It’s a real sliding doors situation. Did we dodge a bullet by not getting him, or could have actually have been a far bigger success at Chelsea than he ended up being at City?
We’ll never know, but we will also not forget that feeling of having missed out on the reinforcement we needed up front. In some ways, we’ve never recovered our dominant position in the transfer market.
