Javi Martinez Saga Rolls On - Trip to Germany Fails to Materialize

Either he's close to signing for Bayern or ... he's not. That's about all anyone can say.

Monday brought the news that Javi Martinez was on a flight to Munich, presumably to sign final papers and take a physical examination. This was relayed to us by Dozbik's FanPost, which you can see here. But the primary source for the rumor was ESPN FC's twitter account, which can't cite anything reliable. In fact, the only say that Javi was "thought to" have boarded a flight to Munich.

The twitter world was on fire with the rumor, but no hard evidence has been found. In fact, over the weekend, Javi himself said that there was no further news. Then, this afternoon, Canal Athletic, a Spanish site, reported that Javi was still in Spain and had, in fact, been training. But that part seems odd, too, because Bilbao has a match this evening (kicking off in a few hours) at Atletico Madrid, so Canal Athletic's article very much makes it seem like he's NOT planning on playing with the club. If their version is true, it's still very likely that he's going to be sold, but impossible that he was on a flight to Germany this morning.

Meanwhile, from out of the blue, the Daily Mail reports that Manchester City is re-interested in signing Martinez. In fact, the Daily Mail's Simon Jones, modestly nicknamed "The Insider," gives the move to City a 3/5 chance of happening. Of course, that is indeed Simon Jones' photo in the upper-right corner, so take a good, hard look at that before you believe anything he says.

Considering the fact that he's been left off the club's squad list for the past several matches, there's still a great chance that he leaves. But it's not a sure thing that he will come to Bayern, and the midfield looked great vs. SpVgg on Saturday. With Bayern's refusal to pay 6 million Euro or more in tax add-ons, Bilbao is going to either come off the ledge, find a new buyer, or try to convince Javi to come back into the fold. None of those options feel very palatable for Athletic Bilbao right now, but they need to settle on one within the next 3 days.

As always, we'll be back with more as the story unfolds. Stay tuned to our twitter feed at http://twitter.com/BavarianFBWorks, and check back to this spot for any updates. Thanks for reading.

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UPDATED - For what it's worth, "Sport1" says that he will sign a deal with bayern tomorrow.