Saturday, 26th July, 2014
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has suggested if his club had signed Luke Shaw from Southampton this summer it would have disrupted the dressing room, due to the 19-year-old's wage demands.
Mourinho was in the race for Shaw, but pulled out, leaving Manchester United unopposed and the Red Devils duly completed a £27m deal for the England left-back.
The defender is thought to be earning around the £100,000 per week mark, a sum which Mourinho is sure would have caused problems had Chelsea matched it.
"If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead", he was quoted as saying by the BBC.
"We would have killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in our dressing room, because when you pay that much to a 19-year-old kid – a good player, fantastic player – but when you pay that amount of money, the next day, we would have had players knocking on our door.
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"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 money than I get?'", Mourinho added.
Shaw is currently with Manchester United on their pre-season tour of the United States, having penned a four-year contract with Louis van Gaal's men.
Manchester United could yet pay up to £31m for the defender, dependent upon his performances at Old Trafford.
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