With Tottenham Hotspur fans celebrating a narrow, but comprehensive, 1-0 victory over Burnley in Friday evening’s FA Cup third round clash, the focus for many over the weekend was on who we might potentially meet in the fourth round encounter – but we of course now know that it will be Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side.
With many fans feeling this week would mostly be spent talking about potential selection issues and our chances of causing a major upset, late on Tuesday morning it was started to be reported that we were now close to the capture of Genoa defender Radu Dragusin, with a fee of around £21.5 million plus add ons being bandied around and for those who like a flutter, football betting might have decent odds on this one being announced quite soon.
The 21 year old, 13 capped Romanian full international made his way quickly through the youth ranks of Italian giants Juventus, and he did go on to make his debut for them before Genoa came knocking, wherein he completed a very successful loan spell with them and his signing was made permanent the following window for around 5.5 million Euros as he had met several of the buy option clauses.
So far in the 2023/24 Serie A campaign, he has featured in all 22 of their matches so far, and Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich are said to hold an interest this month, but it seems we are in pole position so far.
With it known that former Australian gaffer Ange Postecoglou was in the market for a centre half to provide support and cover to Cristian Romero and Mickey van de Ven given the injury struggles they have both had this year, Dragusin’s age, particularly given his good game experience already, could be the perfect solution, and would obviously mean we no longer need to try and shoe horn full backs Ben Davies and Emerson Royal into the position.
49 capped England international Eric Dier remains heavily out of favour with our new boss, and that is clear for all to see with the 29 year old former regular only featuring in four games so far this campaign. Given the earlier speculation about his own future, there are some strong reports emanating from the German media that suggest he is now also on the verge of reuniting with Harry Kane at Champions Bayern, which also points to the fact we could now be close on Dragusin.
In other transfer related news, 23 year old defender Djed Spence has seen his season long loan spell out with Leeds United at Elland Road brought to an abrupt end after only making five starts, with two substitute showings, in what was a very poor first half of the campaign. It is being rumoured that he could now head in Genoa’s direction as part of the Dragusin deal as well.
It could be an interesting month ahead.
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