Hope-hype: Juventus linked with potential Pogba replacement

It remains all quiet on the Paul Pogba front.

Is no news good news?  Is this one of those situations like when the doctors don't have to call you back with the test results?  Or is the no news actually bad news?  (It's all over.)  Or, to be more accurate, is the no news actually, well, no news?

Juventus continue to claim they aren't selling, Pogba supposedly isn't satisfied being only the joint-highest paid player on Chelsea, and our negotiators are actually just enjoying the local scenery and the fantastic espresso?  There's nothing worse than no news.  And while I realize that I'm making something (a Pogba post) out of nothing (no news), just repeating ad nauseam that Chelsea are looking to bid £70m+ like the English tabloids are is still worse.  (And let's not even talk about the fresh crop of ITK accounts that have popped up all over Twitter in the last 24 hours.)

But, if we're looking for signs of life somewhere in this thing, maybe we need to look to the East, and to what else Juventus are rumored to be up to in the market.  Their interest in Schalke's Julian Draxler has ebbed and flowed over the past few weeks, but the stories remain.  As do the tenuous links with the likes Mkhitaryan, Nasri, Eriksen, and Lamela.

Meanwhile, there's been a fresh round of Axel Witsel rumors as well over the past day or so, with the most excellent midfielder supposedly looking to come back to the limelight from the wilderness that is the Russian league.  In fact, Chelsea (and AC Milan) had been linked earlier in this window to the man currently plying his trade for Andre Villas-Boas at Zenit St. Petersburg, but nothing had come of those then.  Should Juventus suddenly have a need to replace yet another member of their midfield, Witsel could be near the top of a very short list of possible candidates to do a Pogba-esque job.

@FalseCfc no

— Gianluca Di Marzio (@DiMarzio) August 25, 2015

I reject your (rumored) reality and substitute my own.