Santi Cazorla Rumours Are Both Incoming And Best Ignored

The fallout over Malaga's putative ownership change has included quite a lot of talk about the final destination of winger Santi Cazorla. With Cazorla mostly linked to Arsenal, who are in desperate need of signing good players (ooooh, Lukas Podolski diss!), there didn't seem to be much to talk about Chelsea-wise -- out of Malaga's players, Salomon Rondon remains our most likely transfer target.

But expect some Cazorla rumouring to heat up soon, thanks to this note from AS:

Mientras esto sucede, la ofensiva del fútbol inglés para llevarse a Santi Cazorla se intensifica. El Arsenal ya ha comunicado al Málaga su conocida oferta de 23 millones de euros. A estos dos equipos se han unido los también londinenses Tottenham y Chelsea quienes, hace cuatro días, hicieron llegar su interés por el jugador aunque no presentaron una oferta en concreto.

Roughly translated, that's something like Arsenal have offered €23M, and both Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea are interested, although neither have submitted an offer yet.

So! Cazorla interest! Orrrrrrrr not. Leaving aside AS's sometimes dubious reputation, there's almost no way that the Blues are seriously interested in picking up the Spain international, and precious little reason for Cazorla to want to join. Sure, we've been looking at adding another winger this summer, and he certainly is a good one, but Chelsea have been linked to the versatile winger/striker types (Hulk), the young prospects (Victor Moses) or the boths (Andre Schurrle). Cazorla, who'll turn 28 in the middle of next season, isn't any of those things.

He's also not a clear starter at Chelsea. He's not obviously better than Juan Mata on the left flank, nor Ramires on the right, and although you could make the argument that Ramires' style isn't conducive to playing against weaker teams, Marko Marin is around to help out there. Cazorla wouldn't come cheap, either -- if AS's report on Arsenal's bid is correct, he'd be at least as expensive as Mata was last summer.

If there was some value in Cazorla, I could see Chelsea having a real interest. Since there's not, I'd rather just leave him to the teams scrambling for in-their-prime talent to help out immediately. Hopefully the club sees things the same way.