Guillem Balague is a well connected man in Spanish football. He’s made a living decoding the messages that come out of the peninsula’s big clubs, and he’s got an update on a certain Barcelona star for us.
Phil Coutinho joined Barcelona a year ago for huge money and made a bright start, but this season his form has faded.
He finds himself behind Ousmane Dembele in Ernesto Valverde’s plans most weeks now, and that’s beginning to worry the player.
There were rumours this week linking the Brazilian with a return to the Premier League – to Chelsea in fact. But in quotes carried on Football365, Balague has dismissed those rumours as confected by Coutinho’s handlers in order to increase pressure on Barca.
They invested a lot in him, and the rumours linking him with an exit should he not play are meant to pressure the Catalan club into getting him into the lineup more in big games.
Unfortunately for him, it might take a little more than that to budge a team as big as Barcelona.
