The two crucial financial factors that broke Andreas Christensen’s contract deal with Chelsea

If you look back to what we were writing on this website back in September, we were pretty confident that Andreas Christensen would be staying at the club, and pretty confident that Antonio Rudiger would be going.

Since then, both cases swung back and forth from likely to unlikely, but in the end both will go.

The story of Christensen’s departure has been underreported compared to Rudiger’s, but Simon Johnson’s piece in the Athletic today tells the whole story.

He narrows it down to two crucial financial points which caused the new deal – which appeared to be agreed at some moments – to fall apart.

The first was to do with the signing on fee. Chelsea though a wage rise would be enough, but Christensen clearly disagreed.

The second was to do with a second lump sum bonus – in this case an agent’s fee paid to Christensen’s father, who is his representative.

The player and his entourage wanted it up front, the club wanted to split it over the four years of the deal they had on the table.

Neither of these things feel like deal breakers to us, but we suppose that in the end every failed negotiation is made up of smaller issues that add up to be insurmountable.

This feels like one that may cost both parties in the end.