“‘What’s wrong?’ I yelled. ‘We can’t stop here. This is bat country!'”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Welcome back to the third glorious installment this month of Dispatches from Bat Country. That’s right, THREE. In one month. And it’s not even the transfer window! They say good things come in threes; or is it bad things? Either way: Bat Country has no regard for your mortal concepts of good and bad and instead spreads eternally towards the horizon.
With that said, my time and energy are not eternal, so this will likely be the last dispatch this month. Not really. Maybe. It’s classified.
Here we cover all those rumors on which we normally wouldn’t report. The fringe cases. The names that spring up from untold lands, off the beaten path. We’ll discuss mostly incomings, but outgoings too, and try and focus on names we haven’t already talked about elsewhere on the site. Each name will be accompanied by a Guano Meter: a ranking out of 5 that instead of rating how likely we think it is to happen, it instead is the complete opposite. For example, a Guano Meter of 5/5 would be something like Tottenham Hotspur ever paying Shakhtar Donetsk a transfer fee for Manor Solomon.
Kevin Denkey
- Togolese striker – hey, we had a Togolese striker once! Results were… mixed
- He’s killing it in the Belgian league, currently the top scorer with 23 goals in 28 matches
- Hey, check out who is top comparison is on fbref:
- This report comes from Sebastien Denis of Foot Mercato, who I believe is pretty decent on Belgian football
- All the reports say, however, is that we’ve sent scouts to watch him – and we will send scouts to watch a LOT of players
Guano Meter: 3/5 – sourcing isn’t bad, but there’s nothing there to say we’re actively pursuing him.
Roony Bardghji
- Winger / wide forward whose name I don’t think I have spelled right ONCE without a Google; anyways, he’s at FC Copenhagen
- Did I mention he’s Swedish? Maybe he wants to come hang with Deki and Bergvall
- I mentioned him back in January; long story short is we’ve had interest in him a while and he previously trialed with Spurs
- This rumor isn’t going away, and more recently Fabrizio Romano has said we’re keeping tabs on him, with the Swede supposedly unlikely to sign a new contract with Copenhagen
- There’s quotes here too! Apparently Bardghji was asked about Bergvall heading to Spurs, and the future possibility of a Swedish triumvirate down at N17, and he definitely didn’t shut down any rumors…
Guano Meter: 2/5 – again, this is one that just won’t go away – plus there’s some solid sourcing. Maybe just one for the future, but there’s some smoke for sure.
Dani Rodriguez
- Barcelona U19 youth product who is a central midfielder. Or winger. Or neither. Seriously, I know next to nothing about this dude, he’s not even on fbref!
- Here’s a sweet highlights vid, complete with terrible electronica in case you wanted to get excited and immediately declare him a footballing genius on whom you are the foremost expert – sign him now, FFS Levy!
- Seriously though, does anybody see shades of Bryan Gil in that video?
- Anyways, apparently he’s out of contract this summer and we are offering him an enticing package; I hope that’s not a euphemism
- That’s according to SPORT anyway, who aren’t exactly the most reliable but also aren’t the worst
Guano Meter: 4/5 – probably not. But maybe! I’d want better sourcing to push this any higher.
Ederson
- Okay, so now we’re getting meatier. Here’s another name that was linked back in January: he’s a Brazilian midfielder at Atalanta
- He has quite an all-round skillset; he’d work well as one of Ange’s #8’s, but could conceivably slot in at the #6 as well
- Fab Romano was the one who linked us back in January, so you can bet the interest is real
- In the last few weeks, there’s been an explosion of reports coming out of Italy around our desire to sign him
- You wouldn’t typically call the Italian tabloids good sources, but there’s a lot of smoke here, and it only seems to be growing thicker
Guano Meter: 2/5 – It’s the sheer volume here that does it for me, combined with a decent source saying we had / have interest. One to watch.
Morten Hjulmand
- A Danish defensive midfielder with a name that sounds like he could be fronting a Norwegian pop band instead of playing football
- He’s at Sporting in Portugal, and you know what buying players from the Portuguese league is like…
- He does look like he gets forward a bit for a CDM though, but there’s nothing really in the data that says he’d be a good fit for our #6 role: his progressive passes and carries are both pretty terrible, and that’s kind of a necessity for Ange
- The report is from Record Portugal, so not exactly what you’d call ironclad – and all they had to say is we had scouts at Sporting vs Benfica, with Hjulmand thought to be of interest
- What’s interesting is we were linked with him around a year ago as well – is it possible Record dredged that rumor up and assumed he was the one we were there to watch?
Guano Meter: 5/5 – Bad sourcing, bad player fit. That’s a no from me.
Andrea Cambiaso
- 24-year-old Juventus fullback / wingback
- He’s Italian, so you just know there’s very little chance he leaves… except Destiny did. Hmmm.
- Time for an fbref chart with little to no context:
- Wait, did I say fullback? Even for a wingback that seems like insanely low levels of defensive output. Do they not tackle in Italy or something?
- With those attacking numbers and one more ‘s’ in his name he might make a decent striker
- The interest goes back a while, but all from pretty rubbish tabloids at this point
Guano Meter: 5/5 – Italian tabloids tell you all you need to know.
And… breathe. We’ve made it. But there is always more, more tabloid rubbish, more highlights videos, more fbref charts and so the rumors will never stop! Welcome to Bat Country.