There comes a point when a player not being overly eager to sign for a club should make that club walk away, but Middlesbrough haven’t got there yet with Jese Rodriguez.
Aitor Karanka has clearly got a lot of faith in Jese’s ability to succeed at Middlesbrough, and that’ll be why he’s not ruled the transfer out, despite several reasons stacking up to suggest it may not be the greatest deal in history.
French newspaper L’Equipe reported on Friday morning that Jese’s move to Middlesbrough is ‘pending’. He missed training on Wednesday to do something related to the possible move, but was back in training on Thursday.
PSG would dearly love Jese to sign for Middlesbrough over the player’s preferred option Las Palmas. The reasons are two fold, Las Palmas can’t get anywhere near to Jese’s high wages and due to FFP (that’s their excuse anyway) could only muster up 20%, leaving PSG to cover the rest.
The French club are also concerned about Jese going back to his native Las Palmas. Earlier this week L’Equipe said: ‘Jese does not always know how to say no to friends who are not bound by a curfew. And in Las Palmas they are necessarily a little more numerous than in the north of England.’
There are often comments which allude to Jese not having the best character, and that may have played a part in his Real Madrid exit, with concerns over the forward’s determination to ‘fight for his dream of being a star of reggaeton’.
Jese would much prefer Las Palmas, with L’Equipe saying he hasn’t wanted to learn French and therefore wouldn’t much fancy learning English either.
Canarias7 report that Las Palmas haven’t given up and will ‘make an attempt’ at a higher offer, presumably a higher percentage of wages, before the window shuts. That could be why Jese is back training with PSG, trying to drag things out to give Las Palmas more time to beat Middlesbrough.
Karanka needs to make a decision on this, if by the end of Friday Jese is still stalling then Middlesbrough should consider scrapping the whole thing. It’s good to be eager to sign a player and give him time to think, it’s not so good to look desperate and let a player mess a club about.
