Jose Mourinho: 'Luke Shaw would have killed Chelsea'

By Alex Meyers, Reporter | 26 July 2014

Jose Mourinho says that if Luke Shaw had signed for Chelsea then it would have caused problems in the dressing room due to his high wages.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has said that Luke Shaw's wage demands put him off signing the defender.

The 19-year-old joined Manchester United last month for £27m, and he is reportedly earning a wage of £130,000 a week.

Mourinho has admitted that while he thinks Shaw is a "fantastic player", his excessive pay would cause friction among the squad.

"If we pay to a 19-year-old boy what we were being asked for, to sign Luke Shaw, we are dead," The Guardian quotes him as saying. "We would have killed our stability with financial fair play and killed the stability in our dressing room.

"Because when you pay that much to a 19-year-old kid – a good player, fantastic player – but when you pay that amount of money, the next day, we would have had players knocking on our door.

"They would have been saying, 'How is it possible I play 200 games for this club, won this and that, yet a 19-year-old comes here and gets more money than I get?'"

Shaw has won three caps for England and played for his country in this summer's World Cup.