SHARE

It’s probably best advised that if a club spends big on two midfielders in the same transfer window that first they work out how those players are going to operate together.

Much of the Italian noise around Douglas Luiz moving from Aston Villa to Juventus has been way over the top, and encouraged by general intrigue and suspicion around the deal.

Whereas first the deal to sign the Brazilian from Aston Villa was seen as a fantastic piece for the Turin club, the slant then changed. When the Premier League club came out and explained they needed the sale to help with financial constraints, it encouraged suspicion around Juventus.

The deal with Barcelona which saw Arthur Melo move to Turin wasn’t forgotten.

So as the midfielder continued to fail to get minutes, those worries were encouraged. Indeed, that he didn’t even get off the bench at the weekend in the 0-0 draw with Napoli has seen concerns grow.

TMW report the transfer from Aston Villa is ‘still a mystery’, and there’s uncertainty over whether he can even play alongside Teun Koopmeiners, who arrived from Atalanta for a fee approaching €60m.

Juventus manager Thiago Motta has been asked about the two being able to play, and is quoted as saying: “Everything is possible. Everything is possible, especially when we are talking about strong players. We’ll see tomorrow if we play like this, maybe even during the match. But I repeat, everything is possible.”

Those comments were before the Napoli match, and Luiz didn’t even get off the bench.