As I said ballauge says Barca want coutinho and Griezmann and Messi and iniesta and Suarez.
To play copa and cl and win the treble Barca need to keep it fresh. Right now they've 9 points over atletico with less than half their season gone... 17 league matches played.. so there's 21 to go so nothing won til it's won.
So there's every logic to say Barca could do with a top player.
But as I said they've 8 players they want gone on large wages and 6 of them don't ever play. 500k plus a week doing nothing.
Ballague has hedged bets by saying everything is open, including a deal for the summer done now. Nobody has actually bid and the opening gambit is a Nike shirt "faux pas" when no deal was even remotely close.
My view is a large potion of this is to please fans and the winter break is now just about over. We are seeing Spanish outlets tell them coutinho has downed tools, that he has played last game etc. As you point out he played on 30th, 5 days ago... vvd was dropped out for 3 games with real deal on table.
None of it really adds up. We know Barca want him but they have to do a deal.
What we don't know is if lfc position has actually changed given salah form as we have said nothing yet more hack are piling on saying our position has in fact changed