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An interesting new twist has arising in the ongoing Alvaro Pereira transfer saga, which judging by the latest word from his agent we should now consider pretty darn close to dead. Pereira's agent, Alejandro Savichara, is now insisting that FC Porto are deliberately refusing to concede ground in negotiations over the purchase of his client simply because they're annoyed at the fact that Chelsea bought out Andre Villas-Boas' clause earlier this summer.

The deal fell apart. At the moment I don't believe it will happen. Porto went back on their word because they promised to sell Alvaro Pereira if there was an offer over 20m. Chelsea passed that. When one side does not want to negotiate, there is not much you can do. I think that FC Porto has used Alvaro Pereira to take revenge on Chelsea on the question of Villas-Boas. -Alejandro Savichara, Alvaro Pereira's agent. Source: Twitter.

On first thought, there could definitely be something here. Porto were notoriously cranky with Chelsea and Villas-Boas after the new manager jumped ship in June, and Pinto da Costa certainly seems vindictive enough to take out his rage on the club in future transfer attempts. However, while that's a neat, visceral explanation that puts the blame solely on Porto for Pereira's failure to move to Stamford Bridge, ultimately I don't think it's a sufficient one.

Porto have buyout clauses in all of their contracts, and if there was a promise to be released for a certain fee, it should have been written into the buyout clause. This is a binary condition, and Chelsea simply have to meet the buyout clause to get their man - and it's not Porto's problem if the Blues don't want to match their prices. They're not obligated to sell.

There are shades of Luka Modric here, with a player desperate to move to Stamford Bridge while their team prevents them, especially with these accusations of broken promises, but Modric doesn't have a release clause for Chelsea to meet, while Pereira does. It's hard to blame Porto for simply sticking to their guns - if Chelsea wanted the Uruguayan so badly, they could have him. It'd just cost a lot. C'est la vie.