Chelsea To Swoop For Liverpool’s Raul Meireles Because Villas-Boas Managed Him For One Game?
By Chris Wright
The Daily Mail seem bloomin’ well adamant that Chelsea may be about to table a £12 million offer for Liverpool’s dragon-tatted midfield hipster Raul Meireles in a bid to hedge their bets should their chase for Luka Modric ultimately end fruitless:
“Chelsea are considering a move for…Raul Meireles as they contemplate an improved offer for Luka Modric.”
As pointed out to us by our pals over at Anorak, this where the Mail’s spiel starts to fall apart (if you considered it to be perfectly plausible up until this point), as they continue:
“However, Andre Villas-Boas knows him well from their time at Porto and is interested to see if a deal could be done. Liverpool want close to £12m for the 28-year-old who was voted the PFA Fans Player of the Year.”
Ah. A quick look at the relevant dates show us that Villas-Boas was announced as the new Porto manager on June 2nd, 2010, with Meireles moving to Liverpool on August 29th of the same year – thus leaving the total matches that the Portuguese midfielder played under AVB standing at one.
Still, we’re sure those two months of sporadic training sessions and holidays in Ibiza were positively golden.
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Raul Meireles is definitely one of the most underrated players on Liverpool if not the EPL as well.
Would hate to see him leave ‘Pool
who said that? the daily fail?
Villas-Boas was assistant coach to Mourinho at Porto in 2004-2005. He should know Merieles well.
Although I don’t like his age for a transfer, I wanted him at United last year, wouldn’t mind him at United this year.
“Dragon tatted hipster” ? Seriously? He’s a class player and deserves a proper introduction. That word is definitely something better suited for Joey Barton.
Also, as JJ pointed out above, Villas-Boas was an assistant to Mourinho during Porto’s (and Mourinho’s) glory days and clearly knows him well enough to appreciate his quality.
The Portuguese swoop for the Portuguese, if you need further evidence take a look at Real Madrid.
Actually, AVB sold him when he took over Porto because he wanted to bring in younger players.
Quality player and massively underrated.
I wish Villa had done a straight swap with Downing for him.
If Meireles leaves – which would be a big mistake in my view – we only have Dalglish to blame for that. If Dalglish had his way he would gladly swap Suarez for either McCready or Shane Long.
I don’t get why it’s the foreign player – again- that looks to be shown the door. You don’t get better by selling your best (on the ball) players to rival teams at ‘fair prices’. Or have I got this wrong?
I’ll really begin to worry if either Miereles or Aquilani do not play in the next couple of games.
Actually, Meireles never seemed to have played a competitive match under Villas-Boas at Porto. If Meireles left on Aug. 29, 2010, Porto would have played 4 competitive matches under AVB (2 Europa League, 2 Portuguese League), and won 4 of 4. From the records I can find, Meireles was not even on the bench for any of those 4 games.
As far as AVB’s stint at Porto under Jose, Jose left Porto right before Meireles arrived. If AVB left at the same time, they never would have been together.
It’s likely AVB has good intel on Meireles, but the assertion Meireles played under AVB is likely incorrect.