Gervinho to Al Jazira Nearly Complete?

From the moment Gervinho became connected to Roma in the summer of 2013, you got the feeling it wouldn't end well. His time with Arsenal was so awful, so fruitless, and quite frankly, so embarrassing that you would've thought Walter Sabatini had lost his mind, even at the relatively cut rate price of €8m. Seldom has a player come to Roma with such controversy, proceed to shed those demons only to fall back into his old ways, and all in the span of 18 months, but that's Gervinho's Roma career in a nutshell; nobody wanted him, but then he did just enough to seem like a valuable piece of the puzzle, and then it all came crashing back to earth in 2015.

Given those unique set of circumstances, when word broke loose earlier this week that Roma not only found a taker for Gervinho's services, but that they were actually going to turn a profit on the deal, it seemed too good to be true.  Like, seriously, someone was not only going to take Gervinho off of our hands, but they'd actually pay €13m on top of that!? Where do we sign?

And while this move has yet to come to fruition, word around the campfire says that Walter Sabatini met with Al Jazira executives in London to cross the t's and dot the lower case j's. Not only that, several Italian outlets are reporting that Al Jazira President Ammar Bashir was in Rome today to finalize the deal with The Predator himself, one that will, at the very least, double his current salary.

While we're still in the rumor phase of this story, the boots on the ground lend a certain amount of credibility to this make believe move, one which could be the first domino in yet another Roman overhaul. Will this be the first step in Rudi Garcia's forced-but-not-forced wink, wink, nudge, nudge resigning? Taking away his favorite weapon could be the line of demarcation in the Sabatini-Garcia tug of war, one which leaves Roma not only in need of a new winger, but of a new manager.

Generally speaking, I don't count my chickens before they hatch, and I was as ardent supporter as Gervinho had around here last season, but this move seems like it paves the way for all of my Spalletti dreams come true, so it's hard not to get excited.

Come on, Gervinho, do the right thing. Imagine how many head accessories you can buy with that kind of dough