Reports: Roma and Watford Have Iturbe Transfer Deal in Place

Even by Roman standards, this week has been unhinged. Following their scoreless draw with Napoli over the weekend, which under normal circumstances would have been fine, Roma bowed out from the Coppa Italia to the lowly and barely registerable Spezia Calcio, which naturally spurred further calls for Roma to sack Rudi Garcia.

And that was just the beginning. Over the past 48 hours, Roma has given the dreaded vote of confidence to Garcia, offered the job to Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, recruited Marcelo Bielsa as a caretaker manager, brokered a deal for Luciano Spalletti effective December 22^nd, and managed to perfect a new method of carbon sequestration. And really, the bulk of that madness occurred in the past 24-36 hours alone. Roma has always had the market cornered on chaos; no one can deny them that.

Now, for the actual, concrete news (we think), the future of Juan Manuel Iturbe, Roma's €22 million mistake. Sky Sport Italia recently floated the rumor that Roma and Watford, of all places, have agreed on a potential €19.5 million move. The specifics of this move, as reported by Sky Sport Italia, would see Watford take Manu on a season long loan--well what's left of it, I suppose--for €1.5 million, with an €18 million option in June; no word on who makes the call, if indeed that proves true.

We've poured over Manu's successes and failures numerous times, so we'll spare him the smear campaign, but in a nutshell, he's failed to live up to that mega million move, and has barely been effective as a reserve. So at this point, taking a three to four million loss is probably the best for which Roma could hope.

That is unless Roma's manager in 2016 has other plans for Iturbe...hmm.