There’s defo something peculiar going on behind the scenes imo.
The names that have been heavily linked have either indicated they will come, or the club have been mugged off by agents creating a market for their client.
If there wasn’t believed to be a realistic chance of Luis and Fofana, the club could and should very easily brief that they aren’t targets, either explicitly or simply saying don’t believe everything reported, our targets are confidential and negotiations are ongoing.
I think there’s either issues with the contract values or someone is stalling to get a preferred intermediaries snout in the trough. I suspect the latter.