Rumour Mongering: Reds to Rival Chelsea for Jonas Hector

Once you’ve been linked to Liverpool, you never stop being linked. Familiar names; familiar faces. Often it doesn’t even matter if you sign a new deal or change clubs. Usually it’s nothing more than lazy rumour mongers dredging up names they’re familiar with or think the reader will be.

When they’re being talked about, though, it’s difficult not to at least acknowledge it. So it is today that Jonas Hector, FC Koln’s left back Liverpool were meant to be in for over the summer, is being linked once again. Only this time, Liverpool are playing potential spoilers to Chelsea.

Since Hector signed a new, five-year deal to lock him down at Koln through the summer of 2021, Liverpool fans have mostly turned their attentions elsewhere. With James Milner morphing unexpectedly into England’s best left back this season, it’s been easy enough to forget about Hector.

In the meantime, Chelsea have found themselves linked with him, and now the normally reliable Times is claiming that Liverpool could once again move for Hector—this time to beat a rival to a player they still rate highly, even if he’s no longer a priority transfer target for them.

Koln, for their part, are said to have no interest to sell. And many concluded, when Hector signed his new deal last summer, that all the transfer talk was meant primarily to help him get a lucrative new contract and that he never really had any intention of moving away from Koln.

And even The Times admit that Hector to Chelsea or Liverpool is probably not a deal that could be done this month—if it did happen, it’s likely it would have to wait for the summer. Which all would seem to add up to one big pile of a nothing transfer rumour that’s been let out into the wild.

Of course, most transfer rumours could probably be called big piles of nothing. It’s just that it’s rarely quite so clear as this how much nothing there really is to them. For that at least perhaps The Times deserve a small thanks.