Chelsea to pay €35 million for Paulinho

As we told you yesterday, there are some reasonably credible rumors linking Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Paulinho with a post-World Cup move to Chelsea. Today, that same source came forward to say that it would likely cost Chelsea €35 million to sign the Brazilian midfielder away from Spurs.

Lancenet's update today is that Chelsea will have to pay Tottenham €35m for Paulinho. They again repeat the deal will be announced after the World Cup and again say it's being brokered by Giuliano Bertolucci who dealt with some of Chelsea's other Brazilian signings.

Translation via Sports Witness

I think Paulinho can be a very useful player for Spurs and will probably be very good wherever he goes next in his career, but I would bite of Abramovich's hand for even half that amount. Spurs paid £17 million pounds (€20.6 million) for Paulinho this summer, making him, for a time, the clubs record signing, and since then he's put in a number of bad to middling performances. Someone in our writer's room referred to him as a Braziliam Jermaine Jenas. Not exactly high praise.

Still, if a club like Chelsea see him as being so important to them that they're willing to drop that much cash on him, then I don't see any reason not to sell him. There's plenty of things we could buy for €35 million, like a left back and a center back. We wouldn't really even need to replace Paulinho thanks to having players like Mousa Dembele and Nabil Bentaleb already in the first team and players like Jake Livermore and Tom Carroll returning from loan.

So, what do you think Spurs fans? Should we all get together and carry Paulinho down to Roman's yacht?