Why Liverpool must wait patiently for Chelsea’s January sales
Published:Despite many media sources’ insistence that Victor Valdes would be a Liverpool player by now, the former Barcelona goalkeeper remains in football limbo, with reported mystery medicals failing to come to fruition.
The Reds are 10/11 to retain their Premier League top-four status after a patchy start to 2014/15, with number one Simon Mignolet claiming just one clean sheet from 10 all-competition appearances.
A move for out-of-contract Valdes has been thought the likeliest solution to Brendan Rodgers’ side’s netminding ills, although compatriot Iker Casillas, who looks on his last legs at Real Madrid, is also being linked with an Anfield switch.
After pulling off a passable impression of Jim Caviezel in ‘The Passion of the Christ’ during a horror World Cup with Spain, Casillas has further emulated the Hollywood actor by doing little since.
The Los Blancos keeper looks a busted flush, and considering clubless Valdes’ obvious fitness struggles, having been sidelined since March, Liverpool should focus their attentions closer to home in the search to replace Mignolet.
Thibaut Courtois’ return to Chelsea as number one, after three hugely successful seasons on loan at Atletico Madrd, has left three-time Premier League winning stopper Petr Cech at something of a loose end.
Rather embarrassingly, the 32-year-old has been reduced to a single start so far this term, in the Capital One Cup at home to Bolton.
Cech recently voiced his displeasure at these developments on a Czech radio station, stating:
“I have not spoken to anyone, but I think they know me well enough at the club to know that the situation is definitely not the way I would imagine…If the situation will not start to improve for me, then I will want to solve it.”
Rodgers, who was on the Stamford Bridge coaching staff from 2004-08, has pulled a rabbit out of Chelsea’s hat before with the £12m capture of Daniel Sturridge just over two years ago.
With the skull-cap sporting stopper likely to seek a new situation in January, the Northern Irishman should get on the blower to his old employers post-haste.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
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