Rumour Mongering: Santi Cazorla and Swapping Lennon For Aquilani

Some real news this week on the transfer front, as Gael Clichy has signed on with Manchester City for a reported £7M. Depending on reports, either Liverpool weren’t willing to go above £5M for the reclamation project, they were willing to match City but Clichy preferred them due to European football (and a higher pay packet) next season, or that given their transfer history Arsenal decided they’d rather sell to City than Liverpool.

So: End of the world. Panic. Liverpool’s not an attractive destination any more. The baba ganoush is made of people. Etcetera and so forth…

Aaron Lennon & Alberto Aquilani

The people who brought you The Neverending Charlie Adam Story have decided that six weeks of saying he’s signing tomorrow while Raul Meireles is being shopped to free up space is pushing the limits of credulity just about as far as they can go. And so they’ve had to come up with something new, which is to suggest that frequent headless chicken impersonator Aaron Lennon is in fact the man Kenny Dalglish really rates—with some going as far as to say the winger is now Dalglish’s number one target.

Which must mean they’ve stopped saying that Stewart Downing’s signing a few days after Adam, too. Since all the people who knew more than you were calling him Dalglish’s number one wing target up until right about now. Either that or they don’t know what his number one target, wing or otherwise, is.

But still, that shouldn’t get in the way of a good story, and for those who got annoyed by the rumours of Raul Meireles’ immanentimminent departure that seemed to go hand in hand with the Adam rumours (and that also died down around when people gave up pushing those Adam rumours), the mongers have helpfully cut out the middleman this time and combined Alberto Aquilani into their new tale of the transfer season. Or: Lennon’s coming to Liverpool, and Aquilani’s going to Tottenham in return.

So it’s probably time for all the people who didn’t like the idea of swapping our Meireles for Adam to start panicking again. And for the people who don’t properly support some players actually at the club but demanded everybody support Charlie Adam before he’d even signed because he’s British and some in the know said he’s totally Kenny Dalglish’s favourite person in the world to start coming up with reasons why Lennon is in fact totally awesome.

Santi Cazorla

Apparently Liverpool has a lack of wingers and would like one. Some of the geniuses at the Daily Mail and Caught Offside have apparently sussed this out. Which would go some way to explaining why Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, Aaron Lennon, and Juan Mata have all at some point been Kenny Dalglish’s number one priority. And with Mata’s links to Liverpool growing increasingly tenuous and the player himself talking of having no great desire to leave Valencia, it’s time to queue up another highly-rated Spanish wide-man who’s been linked to Liverpool in the past so screw it we might as well run with it again.

That’d be Santi Cazorla to the rest of us. Similar to Mata in that he’s right on the edge of the Spanish first team right now and can play just about anywhere in attack other than as a traditional striker, many of our American readers will remember him as the dude who along with David Silva kicked the United States Mens National Team’s ass in a friendly back at the start of the summer.

As for whether he’d be better than Aaron Lennon, probably not if you’re Harry Redknapp and need a quality midfielder in return to replace Luka Modric. But otherwise almost certainly yes.

In this case, claims are that a formal bid has been made and Villareal are weighing the fee and whether they can find a suitable replacement. So, if that’s true, it would probably suggest that Cazorla and not Lennon is actually the number one priority on the wing. Though of course it may not be especially grounded in reality.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

Back with young, English, highly rated, and rumourd to be heading to half the Premier League talent, Southampton’s 17-year-old winger who was linked to Liverpool in January before everybody decided he was a lock for Arsenal is being linked to Liverpool again. At least a little bit. Though that might just be because Arsenal hasn’t managed to buy him yet and so that means he has to be linked to somebody because once a player’s been linked to a move he never, ever ends up staying put. Or something.

In any case, there was talk of Chamberlain being worth around £12M back in January, but with the cost of English players rising by the day you could probably double that and convince some that it’s a good value. Also, his uncle is Neville Chamberlain. But not that Neville Chamberlain. So he’s probably not a risk to promote appeasement with the Nazis or Christian Purslow.

Paul Konchesky

Meanwhile in super happy fun exciting outgoing news, rumours have Konchesky heading to Wolves to play for ol’ one in the hole Mick. But probably not to play in the hole for Mick. There are some potentially scarring mental images in there if you start to dig. Enjoy.

Of course, for a couple of days Joe Cole was heading to Tottenham to just run around a bit for Harry Redknapp only for nothing to happen. But this time around one of Liverpool’s not particularly good players who also happen to be on huge wages that no club in their right mind would match is heading out. For real this time. Maybe.

Milan Jovanovic

Yesterday when Liverpool’s players showed up for the first day of pre-season training and Milan Jovanovic was nowhere to be found, a handful of rumours surfaced that the club may have payed him off and terminated his contract. It may not be quite that extreme, but Jovanovic himself has come out and said that the club have formally told him he’s not part of their plans and to find a new club.

The most likely rumoured destination is Olympiakos, though as with most of Liverpool’s surplus to requirements players there’s the potential stumbling block of high wages, should cash and not playing time turn out to be a priority. Though at least in Jovanovic’s case there’s a stated desire to continue as part of Serbia’s national team, something unlikely to happen if he stays at Liverpool collecting a paycheque.

Right. That’s about the sum of it for now. Which is to say there’s nothing concrete but, as always, new names to add to the insatiable beast. In the spirit of which, have a Santi Cazorla compilation…

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Category: Premier League, Team News, Transfer News