Chelsea Transfers: Rating Mourinho's 10 Biggest Deals Of The Summer

2. Romelu Lukaku - SOLD

This one's tough to make sense of because it depends whether the move was driven through by Lukaku's lack of motivation in fighting for his place at the club, as Mourinho has suggested, or him being given the impression that he was destined to be stuck on the bench behind Costa no matter what. Personally, even as someone who often thinks Mourinho's statements should be taken with several pinches of salt, I'm more inclined to believe the former. If Lukaku had stuck around last season rather than forcing through a loan move to Everton, he almost certainly would have been able to cement himself in Chelsea's first team with only Eto'o, Torres and Ba as competition. He's expressed his need for regular first-team football several times since then and it seems likely that the arrival of Costa only further convinced him that staying at Stamford Bridge would mean an even tougher fight for time on the field than he would've had first time around. In other words, his early impatience almost certainly doomed him and while it's perfectly understandable that a young player still learning his trade would want to play as much as possible, there's nothing Chelsea likely could have done if he had decided he wanted to go. With that in mind, the £28 million Chelsea received for him is a very good price. He's young and immensely promising, someone the Blues definitely could have done with had he been prepared to get stuck in, but is also still too raw in many aspects of his technical game to have justified sticking him in the Chelsea first team straightaway. As a reasonably quick 21 year old with immense physical attributes, he certainly seemed like a good fit as a Mourinho player and would have benefitted immensely from some tutelage under the eye of his idol Drogba, but it feels as though Chelsea made the best deal they possibly could have out of a bad situation. Lukaku arrived from Anderlecht for a basic fee of £10 million and add-ons worth a further £8 million, but given he barely featured for the club, it's unlikely many if any of those add-ons will have been activated. In that respect, an £18 million profit is a pretty sensational recompense for an unhappy player, even if fans will be left wondering what might have been. Rating: 7/10