Antonio Conte conceded Chelsea couldn't afford to sign Alexis Sanchez due to his salary and agent fees.

Sanchez was finalizing a deal on Monday with Manchester United in which he would be paid £300,000 per week.

Conte doubts Chelsea can financially compete with United and Manchester City.

“In this moment, there are two teams in this league who are ‘top’,” Conte said. “The others have to fight for a place in the Champions League. Last season we did a fantastic job and did a little miracle. This season is showing this.

“We won the league and reached the FA Cup final, and finished with a profit of £50m in the transfer market [actually £69.2m, largely as a result of Oscar’s sale to Shanghai SIPG]. In the past, this had never happened but the situation changed. What happened three years, 10 years or eight years ago was totally different. Now we have to fight and give our all for Chelsea because United and Manchester City will stay there. We’ll have to make a success not with money but with work.

“It’s not simple [to finish above the Manchester clubs] because these big teams continue to improve and invest a lot of money, and there is this gap. These two big clubs can become seriously dangerous for other teams in the world: they are very strong already and want to invest. Look at Alexis Sánchez. Only one or two clubs can pay this type of salary. This is the market. If you want to buy Neymar, you must be ready to give him €25m in wages. If you want to buy Messi, Ronaldo, now Sánchez, you must be ready to pay his salary. We never were in this race for Sánchez, ever, and one of the reasons was this amount of salary.”