Your Transfer Rumour is Bullshit: Liverpool to Beat Everton to Manchester United Reject Edition

There are plenty of bad rumours in the world. Rumours started by a player’s agent angling for a new deal or to get an interested club to put in a bid. Rumours started by questionable sources then picked up and passed along and repeated until it’s no longer clear where they started, just that they exist.

And then there are rumours that make so little sense that you have to question the very nature of your reality. This is one of those rumours. This is Nani to Liverpool. Yes, that Nani. The 29-year-old former Manchester United winger who fell down the pecking order, was loaned to Sporting CP to help United secure Marcos Rojo, and who subsequently decamped to Turkey.

He signed for Fenerbahce last summer in a £4.25M deal, and he managed a solid 12 goals and 13 assists in 47 appearances in all competitions—a goal or assist every 149 minutes he was on the pitch. It isn’t a bad return at all, but it is in a lesser league. And Nani is 29 years old. And just where he would fit in at Liverpool is rather a mystery.

A handful of Turkish outlets, though, claim there is interest. They also claim that Everton are ready to trigger a £10M release clause. And that Atletico Madrid might also want him. Or maybe Inter Milan or Valencia or even his former club Manchester United. It’s something of a wild, random, unfocused collection of possible. A smorgasbord of maybe.

It’s either a bunch of journalists in Turkey latching on to an earlier suggestion from Nani’s agent that he "will be leaving Fenerbahce over the summer" and tacking on every club they can, or it’s Nani’s agent hard at work to find his client a new home. Any way you want to come at it, though, you don’t need a source within Liverpool to tell you it’s bullshit.

You just need an ounce of common sense. Everton, perhaps, would be a believable link. So too Valencia. Inter is pushing the envelope of believability a little, but Serie A and aging ex-Premier League not-quite-stars do have enough of a history not to dismiss it out of hand. A return to United, though? Joining Atletico Madrid? Those are the kind of links that undercut the rest of it.

Those are the kind of links—along with Liverpool, who went from Mario Götze to Sadio Mane but most certainly do not have Nani next on the list of potential attacking targets—that make the entire rumour look an exercise in bullshit. Either by Turkish outlets eager to capture eyeballs via wild speculation or by an agent looking to find his client a club.

Either way, the idea that Nani could end up at Liverpool—or United or Atletico Madrid—is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Everton, though. We could see him at Everton…