Ontiveros move looks dead—will Leo Suarez stay?

Apparently Villarreal’s patience with the Malaga owner has run out. We are not going to pay €15m or anything like it for Javier Ontiveros, and prefer to wait and see if we can get him for nothing in January (though other teams could sign him then too).

With Leo Suarez no longer taking up an extracomunitario place, it’s possible he could remain with the club, though he is more used to playing on the right than the left. Or, we could have another player in mind, though we’d prefer not to be adding people so close to the start of the season.

The other question is what happens to Alfred N’Diaye now—my guess is part of the reason Villarreal has withdrawn from the Ontiveros move is that they have found a team willing to take him on the same terms as Malaga’s. At the moment, the sheikh’s team can’t register him with the league. Recall he had a mandatory €6m purchase clause if Malaga got promoted; they didn’t.

MARCA reports Dani Raba may be loaned to Zaragoza. Huesca have also been interested. A Segunda loan makes sense for him since he’s not going to get much playing time with us. Last year he only had 186 league minutes (310 in the Copa, 265 in Europa league). And you may have missed it, but Akram Afif extended his contract another year and was immediately lent to Al Sadd again, where he scored oodles last season. He will be only 23 next summer, so at that point either we should look to sell him (his transfermarkt value continues to rise) or give him a chance to make our first team and extend his contract.