Chelsea: 5 Reasons Selling Juan Mata To Man Utd Is A Terrible Deal

3. He's Worth More Than £40 Million

£37-40m is a heck of a chunk of dough, but in the current market, is it really such a good deal for a player who scored twenty goals and made thirty-five assists last season? When selling to a title rival? Mata is reportedly leaving for between £2-5m less than Mesut –zil's £42m transfer from Real Madrid to Arsenal last summer. –zil notched up between 25-35 assists per season over his preceding four years for club and country, where Mata typically scored a larger number of goals but made slightly fewer assists (in England and Spain). It should also be taken into account that Real Madrid already had a number of superstars waiting to replace him, with his place in the squad immediately filled by Isco despite already having Luka Modric ready and waiting, meaning his loss was less keenly felt at a psychological and physical level than Mata will be for Chelsea. Considering Chelsea have no real need to sell, certainly not in the middle of the season when the Spaniard's value should be elevated even higher, it's baffling why the Blues' negotiating team settled for a relatively small amount in selling a player at his prime to a rival club, under no pressure and for less than a similar player's move from abroad the previous summer. Admittedly, it's a bit of a fool's game trying to make direct comparisons between different players' transfer fees when so much is dependent on circumstance rather than cold, hard numbers. After all, Gareth Bale (only a year younger than Mata at the time of sale) is the world's most expensive player but you'd be hard pressed to argue that he's the world's best, or even has the potential to be. My point is more that given who Chelsea are selling to, who they're selling and when they're selling, with no equivalent or greater talent waiting in the wings or about to arrive and no financial pressure to make the deal happen right now, £40m suddenly starts to seem a whole lot less than it ought to. Considering how little established talent you can buy for that money these days, Diego Costa's release clause notwithstanding, it all points to Mata, once again, being tragically undervalued by the club.