10 eventful days of the Willian saga

So, 10 days ago, Tottenham Hotspir were being strongly linked with an attacking player, who seemed like the best available replacement to fill the void soon to be left by Gareth Bale.

His name is Erik Lamela, a 21-year-old with an excellent first full season in Serie A under his belt at Roma, and carrying a goal threat to go with his raw pace and exciting technical ability.

Then, Willian became available due to Anzhi’s owner running out of money.

Willian

Liverpool quickly emerged as the front-runners for his signature, which, and I mean no disrespect to Liverpool, was surprising, because when a player of Willian’s ability becomes available, there are a number of clubs – both oil riches and Champions League football clamouring – trying to add such an eye-catching talent to their ranks.

Soon, after Spurs re-ignited their interest in the Brazilian, seemingly in addition to Erik Lamela, whose links to the North London outfit continued to strengthen, Twitter exploded with the usual jibes of Spurs nicking Liverpool’s targets (ignoring the fact that AVB has been well known to have been keen to sign Willian in each of the previous two windows since taking charge at Tottenham), and Spurs quickly gazumped the Merseysiders as the Brazilian’s preferred destination.

For a few days talk moved on, discussing Spurs as potential title outsiders if, as it looked likely, they will add both Willian and Lamela to the squad to compensate for the loss of Gareth Bale. The proposed Willian transfer began to overshadow that of Erik Lamela, and it looked possible that the fuzzy-headed Samba star could even be a Spurs player by the weekend.

Then Chelsea snatched him away from Spurs. That’s Chelsea, who already have Juan Mata, Oscar, Eden Hazard, and De Bruyne on their books, and have already loaned out the brilliant Marko Marin as evidence of how well covered they already are when it comes to attacking midfielders, with a greater eye for laying on assists, than for scoring themselves.

As a result, many observers, including those paid to be astute and accurate in their assessment of football’s transfer dealings, concluded that Willian was a target for Roman Abramovic, rather than Jose Mourinho.

Jose: the Special One, the Happy One, the One who fell out with Abramovic before, due to the owner’s interference in team affairs. The educated hunch is that Abramovic (possibly with Mourinho’s backing) simply wanted to mitigate the growing threat from North London, and saw an opportunity to assist one of his shady business associates in his homeland.

Within a few hours, twitter was filled with Spurs fans stating that Lamela was always the primary target, the more like-for-like replacement for Bale, who is about to become the world’s most expensive player despite only one season in the Champions League, and despite the club buying him already owing 590m Euros to a Spanish Government in economic ruin.

And so, after an eventful 10 days, Liverpool still don’t have the marquee signing Brendan Rodgers craves, Spurs are still pursuing Erik Lamela to replace Gareth Bale, football finances in Spain are still utterly utterly mental (and wrong), Chelsea still lack any class to accompany their silverware, and, based on the intense competition for places in Chelsea’s midfield, Willian still isn’t going to play in the English Premier League (much).

10 days can be a long time in football. Enough, in this instance, for everyone to flirt with progress and ambition, but end up right back where they started.