According to Fabrizio Romano of Di Marzio, Sky Sports and the Guardian, Tottenham have opened talks with Inter Milan over Milan Skriniar and have been told they’ll need to pay €60m (£55m) to land his signature.
According to Angelo Mangiante of Sky Sports, Tottenham have lodged a bid of €50m (£45.8m) and are awaiting Inter’s response. It remains to be seen whether our approach will be successful, however.
How good is Skriniar?
Very. The 25-year-old has made 128 appearances in all competitions since joining Inter from Sampdoria in 2017, scoring four goals with four assists. He’s been a regular at the San Siro for three years and can lay claim to being one of the best centre-backs in the division.
Last season, Skriniar was only dribbled past once every 144 minutes, made 83 clearances and averaged a tackle (39) or interception (28) every 39 minutes, as per WhoScored. He won 38/74 aerial duels (51%), completed 92.1% of his 1998 passes and blocked 21 shots/crosses/passes.
Inter conceded only 36 goals from 38 Serie A games last season, keeping 14 clean sheets. Skriniar made 32 league appearances, conceded one or less goals in 25 games and shut out 11 sides, as per Transfermarkt. He’d certainly be an improvement on our current backline of Toby Alderweireld, Davinson Sanchez, Japhet Tanganga and Juan Foyth.
If not Skriniar, then who?
We’ve been linked with a move for 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 haven’t made a lot of progress landing anyone’s signature.
Jan Vertonghen was released earlier this summer and has gone on to join Benfica, but we don’t have his replacement lined up. Time is running out to complete a deal too, as the transfer window closes in 11 days. But if we have €50m to spend on Skriniar, we shouldn’t have much trouble signing a centre-back.
Summary
Skriniar looks a good player that would improve our backline, but it would be a shock seeing us spending so much given all the talk about our previous lack of transfer funds.
In other news, 2019’s Tottenham exit couldn’t have gone worse for Fernando Llorente