Is John Terry Really Going To Join Manchester City?

The rumours first started in January that Manchester City were interested in landing John Terry, but nothing seemed too concrete and I, perhaps along with a lot of people, just dismissed it as paper talk.  Why on earth would Terry leave the Blues to take a risk on Manchester City. Now though, its official, City are chasing Terry and they’ve made two offers.

Friday’s offer of £30 million plus the agreement to pull out of the arbitration process over Daniel Sturridge’s compensation certainly raised eyebrows, but Terry has been very quiet. Whilst the club and new manager, Carlo Ancelotti have both stated that Terry isn’t for sale, it just strikes me as odd that they’ve decided to make it public knowledge. If someone comes in for your club captain, you reject it out of hand and leave it at that don’t you?

Are Chelsea laying the ground for Terry’s exit by allowing the bid to come out in to the public domain? By playing to the fans in this way, saying that they don’t want him to go, it seems designed to get Terry to commit to the club publicly. Surely Terry wouldn’t forgo Champions League football for £300,000 a week would he?

If I’m honest, I wouldn’t be that surprised if Terry does request a transfer. After seeing Kaka state at 10am that he was sick of the speculation of him leaving AC Milan and he wasn’t going anywhere, then 6 hours later agreeing terms with Real Madrid, nothing would shock me this summer. Apparently Terry hasn’t closed the door on Manchester City, but then again maybe he’s using that as a leverage tool to renegotiate his contract.

He’s currently on around £140,000 a week at Chelsea and knows he could at least double that if he did join Mark Hughes outfit. At 28, he’s hardly over the hill but City would offer him at least a 5 year contract worth a total of £75 million if he were to join them. That is a frightening amount of money in anyone’s book and perhaps that’s why Terry has yet to come out and state his intention to stay at Chelsea.  Would an increased bid of £40 million see Chelsea let him go?

The crucial factor here is the fans response and Terry will have noted the ridicule and insults that Gareth Barry has had to suffer since he agreed to leave Aston Villa to move to Manchester City.  Barry’s comments from last summer, when he stated that he wanted to leave purely for Champions League football, became an empty gesture when he went to Manchester City in June. Of course, football fans and commentators forget that in the real world when someone offers you twice the money you earn to do the same job somewhere else, you bite their hands off.

The emotional attachment that we all have as fans blinds us to reality sometimes, we love the clubs we support and don’t understand it when we see players we feel don’t share the emotional attachment. Terry has already crossed the line once in his career, walking out on his boyhood team, West Ham, to join Chelsea as a fourteen year old, so emotional attachment is not too strong a tie for him. He may be club captain but is he a Chelsea fan or a professional footballer?