I guess we should never have expected the end of the David Luiz saga to be smooth sailing. Although Luiz reportedly said his goodbyes to his teammates last week, Benfica are now threatening to put him back in the squad and even start him in tonight's cup game against Rio Ave unless Chelsea meet their valuation of the defender, which they had reportedly already done. I don't really understand what's going on here, considering that Chelsea seemed poised to send a reserve player plus £21.5M in cash to the Portuguese side as recently as yesterday, which does appear to meet Benfica's price for their star centre half. Not so, apparently! Assuming the reports today (disclaimer: highly unreliable source) that the deal is in danger are accurate, it's somewhat annoying that Aeolus' bag has been opened just as we've gotten to the home stretch in this rather ridiculous odyssey.
It's been pointed out that this deal is following almost exactly the same course as the transfer that took midfielder Ramires to the Blues over the summer, not getting done until the last minute despite the terms being known at least a few weeks prior to the official transfer. We don't have a few weeks here - the transfer window closes in five days, and so Chelsea will have to move fast to get this fixed, if indeed it does need fixing. For all we know, the deal could already be done and they're just saying things for public effect, although starting Luiz is a game and risking injury wouldn't be very clever unless Benfica are serious about this.
I'm still pretty confident that the deal will be completed by the end of the window, but an official announcement does seem much further away than it did when we got up this morning. We'll make it in the end, but I do hope our next transfer doesn't involve getting cursed by Poseidon.