You snooze, you lose?

I know I'm tempting fate posting on the Romelu Lukaku situation this Saturday morning, given that by the end of the weekend the striker could be a signed, sealed and delivered Manchester United player. That's as opposed to the Chelsea player everyone - including Antonio Conte - has spent the better part of the last 12 months assuming he would eventually become again.

The 24-year-old's protracted desire to escape Everton, to whom Chelsea sold him in 2014, has been as tiresome as it has generated eye-watering headlines of his valuation. That Everton allegedly slapped a presumably prohibitive £100 million price on him is as damning a statement of the inflationary state of football as anything else. I suppose you can't really blame Everton, even if he's really worth only a fraction of that amount.

Both United and Chelsea have apparently offered £75 million. This is still an insane amount, but Conte is reported to have instructed his club's dealmakers (principally Marina Granovskaia) to get Lukaku at any cost. However, that doesn't appear to extend to the fee that Lukaku's agent, Mino Raola, would want from any sale (Raola notoriously pocketed a tidy sum for bringing Paul Pogba to Old Trafford, and also represents another United player, Henrikh Mkhitaryan). Advantage United.

Antonio Conte has now, according to The Times, made his peace over Lukaku signing for United, although he's understandably seething that a player he's been openly courting for the better part of a year is being drawn towards José Mourinho's United at the last minute. And it will raise questions about Chelsea's transfer nous. There's no doubt that the club has demonstrated sound acumen when husbanding its resources: the sales of Juan Cuadrado, Asmir Begovic, Christian Atsu, Bertrand Traore and Nathan Ake have brought in £62 million, money which will go towards the impending acquisitions of Tiemoue Bakayoko and Antonio Rudiger, and possibly Alex Sandro. But still.

Long before those three names were on anyone's lips, Lukaku had been a case of 'when' rather than 'if'. At root has been his desire to play in the Champions League and even to prove to Chelsea that José Mourinho was wrong for selling him to begin with. Everton initially didn't want to let him go, and slapped a nonsensical price tag on him as the proverbial sprig of garlic to ward of predatory interest. On top of that, it has been suggested that Chelsea's relationship with Everton has not been great since it spent much of 2015 trying to buy John Stones. Increasing bids from Chelsea were rejected on the basis that Stones was not for sale. Until Manchester City came along with £47 million, of course. Funny that.

Clubs now appear giddy with an inflated pot of television money, and are apparently happy with increasing their spending on individual players by magnitudes of leaps and bounds. There is a precedent for this: when BSkyB bought the first package of Premier League broadcasting rights in 1992, ahead of the league's debut season, it paid £304 million, establishing the model for paying way over the odds to keep all competitors at bay. 26 years on, the last three-year Premier League TV deal checked in at £8.3 billion. Even with Financial Fair Play ensuring that clubs balance the books, things have gone nuts. If Chelsea do, against the odds, manage to bag Lukaku, it should be remembered that the last two strikers they bought - Diego Costa in 2015 and Michy Batshuayi last summer - cost £32 million and £33 million respectively. And in the case of Costa, you could say they've got their money's worth. Would the same be said of Lukaku? I'm not so sure...