Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Neymar on £677k pay
Despite winning the title things went
BRAZIL superstar Neymar picks up a massive £677,000 a week at Paris Saint-germain.
The former Barcelona forward is on double the amount of the next bestpaid player in Ligue 1, PSG team-mate Edinson Cavani.
But Arsenal and Liverpool target Thomas Lemar is not among the top-30 paid players in the league – taking home £22,000 a week.
The wage league was published in French newspaper L’equipe and nine of the top-10, best-paid players are from PSG.
But Lemar, 22, is still on the contract he signed when he moved to Monaco from Caen in 2015.
Monaco have repeatedly offered the France star a contract extension, but he has declined all attempts. THE first cracks started to appear within weeks of the trophy presentation.
Antonio Conte went on holiday after Chelsea’s title-winning season and quickly the murmurings of discontent found their way back to Stamford Bridge.
A very public fall-out with Diego Costa, rows over Chelsea’s transfer targets and even preparations for the forthcoming season and the defence of their title.
They knew who they were hiring when they brought in Conte after Euro 2016: a driven, combative and confrontational manager who pushes his players relentlessly.
But even years of experience of the many managerial soap operas and fall-outs, still did not prepare some of the Blues’ hierarchy for a summer of discontent which ultimately set the tone for the season. The public row between Conte and Costa left Chelsea in an impossible situation with their biggest characters at loggerheads.
Costa was top scorer in their titlewinning season but there was suddenly no way back and Conte’s No.1 choice to replace him, former player Romelu Lukaku, ended up at Manchester United.
It was systematic of the problems to follow as one transfer meeting – with Roman Abramovich’s lieutenant Marina Granovskaia and former technical director Michael Emenalo – which was supposed to take one hour ended up taking six and with blood on the walls by the end.
It was so brutal, so confrontational, that Abramovich even thought about getting rid of Conte while the Italian was having similar doubts himself.
That perhaps was borne out by Chelsea giving Conte a new contract in the summer but it only included a pay rise as a reward for the title rather than a longer deal. That decision tells its own story. Conte’s point on the transfers was that Chelsea had won the title with effectively 16 players, they had no European football and lacked quality, depth and experience.
The following season they not only needed to strengthen the starting XI but they also needed more squad players. Conte claimed Chelsea needed to buy big players to leave a legacy as the likes of John Terry, Frank Lampard, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba had never been replaced.
They were determined to get players with a re-sale value. The manager wanted proven quality like his former defender at Juventus, Giorgio Chiellini, but Chelsea deemed him too old at 33. They ended up with Germany defender Antonio Rudiger, who is still a bit-part player.
This past window has not been much better, Conte has felt undermined with second-rate signings he thinks have increased numbers but not improved the quality.
The desperate farcical chase for a new centre-forward – Chelsea