Report: Lucas Moura could be deadline day target for Aston Villa

Tomorrow is transfer deadline day and boy howdy here’s a new rumor for you. The Telegraph’s Mike McGrath is now reporting that Lucas Moura could be a deadline day transfer target for Aston Villa, provided a number of dominos are set up and topple the right way.

So here’s the gist: Spurs are reportedly looking to loan in Daniel James from Leeds United. Leeds will only let James go to Spurs if they are able to bring in Hwang Hee-Chan from Wolves, whom Jesse Marsch has worked with at both Salzburg and Leipzig. Should those two moves happen, that makes Lucas Moura even more superfluous to Antonio Conte’s side than he is already, and Villa would be ready to come in for Lucas.

In short, keep an eye on the negotiations for Hwang Hee-Chan, because that’s the first domino that could result in Lucas being managed by Steven Gerrard before the end of the day tomorrow.

So this feels a bit house of cardsy, but these kinds of transfer dominos happen all the time, especially right at the end of the window. Antonio Conte has said that anyone who is a part of his first team and leaves will need to be replaced as he needs a full complement of players for rotation purposes. So Lucas will only leave if Spurs are able to bring in someone to replace him. That’s, I guess, Daniel James — we can (and have) argue(d) why this is a dumb idea, but that’s a side issue here.

I’m not going to say “I told you so” because I didn’t — when discussing Lucas’ “tendonitis” in a past article I took it for what it was, while noting that Bryan Gil’s absence from today’s match squad was likely “transferitis.” So I can’t claim credit for saying that Lucas might be on the transfer list, but boy was I thinking it. Lucas is 30 now, and the last time we saw him was as a right wing back. He has limitations, and clearly Conte thinks that he’s past his sell-by date. It’s probably a good idea to move him on at this point. Villa, meanwhile, need help with their attack, and we know that Lucas still has some spark left in him... just probably not for Spurs.

If it’s accurate, this one could go down to the wire. It does, however, seem plausible. This is the kind of last-minute deadline day madness I live for, so we’ll have to see where it goes from here.

In the meantime, brace yourself for Lucas to potentially start yelling COYVCOYVCOYVCOYVCOYV (or whatever it is Villa fans shout — Up the Villains maybe?) at Villa Park next week.