Romelu Lukaku’s agent, Sébastien Ledure, has criticised the big spending from Saudi Arabian clubs this summer, saying it made it difficult for him to get the striker out of Chelsea.
The agent has been speaking to RTL about a difficult summer transfer window for the striker in which he eventually ended up on loan at Roma.
Lukaku was desperate to get out of Chelsea throughout the entire summer window after it was clear to him in no uncertain terms that he was not a part of their plans moving forwards.
He had looked likely to go back to Inter Milan but burned his bridges there after also speaking to Juventus, a move that did not go down well in Milan.
They pulled out and Juventus never progressed their interest, leaving him scrambling to find a club that could match Chelsea’s demands as the Blues were determined to secure a permanent sale.
They were offering considerably more money than everyone else, in terms of a transfer fee and wages, and Ledure says this made things difficult for him and his team.
“It was very difficult, even impossible at the start of the transfer window, to talk about a loan solution,” he said.
“And what the owners of Chelsea were looking for was above all to find a definitive solution, a transaction, a transfer definitive. And the real change that happened this summer was the arrival of Saudi clubs on the international transfer market.
“They have set the bar so high in terms of the transfer compensation offered to European clubs and in this case to Chelsea, that it has become very difficult for European clubs to line up and therefore on the one hand, you have a club that is not opposed to a transfer.”
“On the other hand, they are going to seek the maximum transfer fee which obviously, in this case, it was only the Saudi clubs that could achieve such large amounts.”
