Jonathan De Guzman finally set for Bournemouth loan

It's been a long, weird ride, but it's finally about to come to something of an end: Jonathan De Guzman is finally set to leave Napoli, and is expected to finally join Premier League team AFC Bournemouth once the transfer window opens.

Assuming he doesn't go AWOL again, anyways.

De Guzman was supposed to join Bournemouth on a season-long loan back in August, with the deal progressing to the point that De Guzman was sent to the airport to hop a flight to England for a medical to finalize the loan. Somewhere between his departure and the airport, though, De Guzman fell off the grid -- Bournemouth officials sent to the airport in England to pick him up were left hanging, because for some reason De Guzman never got on his flight, and didn't bother to tell anyone about it.

I say "for some reason" because we still don't really know why. Even De Guzman's agent seemed in the dark at first, before finally announcing the next day that his client had "decided not to join Bournemouth." That was it. That's the only explanation we've gotten. He decided not to go. Great. It was also the third deal he'd blown up late in the negotiation process, with Napoli setting up his travel to France to join Olympique Marseille before he said no, and killing a move to Sunderland only slightly earlier in the process.

The incident lead to him being left off Napoli's squad list in the Europa League and not even in the matchday squad for a single Serie A match this season. De Guzman has hardly even trained, or been seen at the team's facility at Castel Volturno over the last few months. This split was inevitable, but it's perhaps a little curious that he's electing to join the team that he snubbed months ago.

Regardless, it's good to see this saga end. De Guzman wasn't very good for Napoli, one brief flurry of good form aside, and hopefully he finds better success back in England, where he rose to some prominence with Swansea. In any event, this is all we have left to say to De Guzman. Well, do.

Image from imgur, original source credit: WWE