Tottenham have been linked with Issa Diop, Ben White, Kim Min-jae, Lewis Dunk, Diego Carlos, Milan Skriniar, Ozan Kabak, Ben Godfrey, Kristoffer Ajer, Robin Koch, Guillermo Maripán and Ruben Dias this summer, but we’ve finally narrowed our targets down to just two – Milan Skriniar and Antonio Rudiger.
We’ve been in talks with Inter Milan for weeks over Skriniar’s availability and have been told how much he’ll cost, but we’ve yet to meet the Nerazzurri’s demands and are running out of time to complete a deal.
Conflicting reports in England and Italy
According to the Football Insider, we’re in advanced talks with Inter over a deal and are confident of signing Skriniar for £30m. We’ve also offered him a lucrative long-term contract, but it remains to be seen if our pursuit if successful.
According to Gazetta dello Sport, however, we don’t stand a chance of signing the 25-year-old unless we up our demands. Inter want close to €60m (£54.5m) for Skriniar and our alleged bid doesn’t come close. Antonio Conte has said that Inter will accept ‘an important bid’ for the Slovakian international, but we need to put more money forward.
Skriniar has three years remaining on his deal at the San Siro and is a regular for the Nerazzurri, so I don’t know why we’re trying to sign him for cheap. It’s not going to happen. The 25-year-old is a top centre-back who would be a regular in our first-team, so we’ll have to pay a price that reflects that.
Prediction
The fact we’ve only bid around half of what Inter asked for worries me. The fact we’ve lined up Rudiger as a secondary option worries me too.
It would sum up Tottenham under Daniel Levy if we missed out on our top target and settled for the backup option because they were cheaper, but that does look a possibility right now.
With Jan Vertonghen gone and Juan Foyth & Cameron Carter-Vickers expected to follow him through the exit door, we need another centre-back to accompany Toby Alderweireld, Davinson Sanchez, Eric Dier and Japhet Tanghanga. It remains to be seen who we’ll end up with, however.
In other news, it’s sad to see Paulo Gazzaniga, Danny Rose, Juan Foyth and Dele Alli frozen out