Arthur's mother hits out at Barça boss Setien

What a mess at Barcelona over the swap deal involving Arthur Melo and Juventus's Miralem Pjanic. In between the speed with which games are coming, which don't allow him to recover from the first refereeing robbery before the second arrives, and the Arthur issue, Quique Setien's further complicated things in his most recent news conference. 

Officially it was the preview for the Cetla Vigo game -- but only Barça TV asked him about the game and seven of the 16 questions were about Arthur. There was no hostility in the air despite the barrage of questions, perhaps because the interrogation happened from a distance, over Zoom, but the Arthur subject still threw up some juicy titles. 

Setien started with "the club has not told me he will leave, if it happens I will try to convince him that he has to isolate himself" from his pending move. Perhaps he told the player that himself given the unusual conversation the two had during training which followed. Arthur will have a medical in Italy on Sunday.  

But the bomb arrived whe he said that "Arthur would not be the first player to sign with expectations that don't materialise" and added that "sometimes it's not easy to change things that other managers have said you're doing well." In the end, the person most hostile towards the Barça coach was Arthur's mother, who responded to him on Twitter. 

"My God... now they're starting to pick holes in the player," she wrote.