The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 104: Is one Frenchman leaving Juve as another is set to arrive?

It’s the middle of June and the transfer rumor mill is starting to spin fast and faster as the days go by.

Well, that’s unless it involves waiting for a final decision from Ángel Di Maria.

As we wait for Di Maria to make a decision on where he’s playing next season and for Paul Pogba’s much-anticipated return to Turin to actually take place, there’s another piece of transfer gossip that involves a French midfielder — and it’s one that involves a player who is already a Juventus player.

And it is that report that we got over the weekend and the ripple effect it could have that starts us off on this week’s show. Because, when tasked between choosing between waiting on Di Maria and talking about everybody’s favorite man bun at Juve, you always choose the latter. (As we know, we don’t actually know when Di Maria will make a decision, so that’s always nice.)

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we discuss:

• Could Adrien Rabiot be heading out this summer? It certainly looks possible after Sky Sport Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio reported over the weekend that Rabiot has asked Juventus to sell him this summer, with a handful of Premier League clubs interested.
• Just why could Rabiot be asking for a transfer right now? How much could it do with Pogba? How much could it be for a new experience?
• What this adds to a summer transfer window in which there looks to be a lot of movement within Juventus’ midfield group.
• What this means for Juventus’ three young Italian midfielders in Fabio Miretti, Nicolo Fagioli and Nicolo Rovella, and the potential of this opening up another spot for one of them.
• Actual news of the week: Atalanta exercised its buy option on Merih Demiral, which came as a surprise seeing as just two days earlier it looked like the Turkish defender was set to return to Juventus (and likely headed for a new club).
• Twitter questions — including whether Juventus should put more money into the midfield after Paul Pogba’s arrival or focus more on improving the situation at each fullback spot, and what are the best and worst case scenarios for Pogba’s return to Juventus.

You can listen to Episode 104 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast here:

To our dear listeners: Please look for the latest episode of The Old Lady Speaks to drop every Monday for those of you who live in the United States. (Please adjust your time zone according if you live outside of the U.S.)

If you happen to listen to the Old Lady Speaks on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please feel free to give us a nice rating and review because it is very nice to see that our podcast is being enjoyed by you all. The more you say nice things about us, the more we will continue to love you forever and ever and ever. We promise.

Also, if you haven’t already, please take part in recent our listener survey and let us know what you think of the podcast as a whole. We greatly appreciate the feedback and thank you all for taking part in it.