Sometimes a transfer story emerges that makes you wonder whether you’ve used the right kind of tobacco in your roll-up.
Everton have just spent an entire summer desperately trying to get one faded Galactico off their crippling wage bill.
So why on earth would they replace James Rodriguez, now plying his trade in Qatar, with another highly paid, underperforming Real Madrid bench-warmer?
The similarities between Isco and James are impossible to ignore, even if you overlook the fact the Spaniard, like the Colombian, struggled for game time under current Everton boss Rafa Benitez during their time together at the Santiago Bernabeu in 2015/16.
If Benitez harboured doubts over James’ durability – for all his technical gifts many in the Goodison Park dressing room came to resent his lack of energy and work rate – it’s hard to imagine Isco adapting to a league far quicker and more demanding than the Spanish top flight either.
Isco and James are players cut from the same cloth; peas in a playmaking pod.
Benitez, meanwhile, is a coach who values tenacity over technique, a pragmatist rather than a purist. You won’t see him unbalancing his tactical set-up to make room for an enigmatic number ten, no matter how talented.
Is Real Madrid misfit Isco a no-go for Everton?
Isco lacks the speed of Demarai Gray (above), the work rate of Andros Townsend, and the box-to-box brilliance of Abdoulaye Doucoure.
There’s no place for an old-school ‘trequartista’ in Benitez’s favoured 4-3-2-1 set-up and that’s without mentioning the fact Isco, in recent times, has looked a sluggish shadow of a player at his bandy-legged best in 2017.
Even Carlo Ancelotti, the coach who eked the best out of James during spells at Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Everton, albeit intermittently, has struggled to find a place in his XI for Isco since returning to Real Madrid.
On Sunday, Defensa Central reported Benitez had asked the Everton board to reunite him with Isco when the January transfer window opens. Apparently a short-term loan deal is on the cards for a 29-year-old Spain international due to become a free agent at the end of this season.
We’ll believe it when we see it, however.
Here’s what some Everton supporters on Twitter had to say about the Isco to Goodison rumours:
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