Don't call theme_link() directly

Don't call theme_link() directly. That causes all kinds of havoc and skips preprocess layers.

From the docs: https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes%21theme.inc/function/theme_li...

* To optimize performance for sites that don't need custom theming of links,
* the l() function includes an inline copy of this function, and uses that
* copy if none of the enabled modules or the active theme implement any
* preprocess or process functions or override this theme implementation.

Proposed Solution

use the l() if you don't expect the prepreprocess to run.