Manchester United ‘contact’ Chelsea over potential Marc Cucurella loan — report

Marc Cucurella has played a grand total of zero minutes so far this season, making him the only non-injured, non-goalkeeper on the team with that distinction. While he’s not officially one of the shunned ones (i.e. Romelu Lukaku and Callum Hudson-Odoi), and still training with the first-team, it seems quite obvious where he stands in the pecking order.

But with five years left on a contract that makes him one of the higher-paid players on the team these days, getting rid of Cucurella isn’t quite as easy as we would like it to be. In fact, like turning back time, it may be impossible, especially after a season where he managed to stand out from most of the rest of his underperforming teammates — but not in a good way.

There was brief hope that Newcastle United might be interested, before they took that hope away and then doubled down on our misery by signing Lewis Hall instead.

But just when all hope seemed to be lost, Fabrizio Romano appeared over the ridge on his mighty steed Shadowfax, bringing tidings of comfort and joy rumors and speculation. Look to the North he said, claiming that Manchester United “made contact with Chelsea to ask about conditions of Marc Cucurella deal on potential loan.”

Presumably our answer was, “should we drive him to the airport now or give him time to pack his bags, too?”

Of course, Romano goes on to say that there’s “no bid or concrete talks yet” and that United are looking at a couple others as they scramble to find a working pair of legs in the wake of Luke Shaw’s expected multi-month absence through injury, which has left them without a recognized senior left back. You might wonder why they would ever consider Cucurella, but when an alternative rumored target is a 34-year-old Ryan Bertrand who’s barely played in two years and is currently without a team, a Cucurella loan makes more sense.

(Incidentally, Bertrand is one of the last few players still active from our 2012 Champions League final victory. David Luiz is still kicking with Flamengo, Oriol Romeu was just recently picked up by Barcelona, and Salomon Kalou is said to be playing somewhere ... in Djibouti?)