With news coming this week that Hugo Lloris faces a lengthy spell on the sidelines with a knee injury, the focus on Tottenham Hotspur’s search for shaking up their goalkeeping options has been magnified this week.
While Lloris has fallen foul of the high standards he has set in North London over the past decade this season, making high-profile errors in defeats against Newcastle, Aston Villa and Arsenal in both North London derbies, Spurs put their search for a successor to the 36-year-old on hold over the January transfer window.
Opting not to sign a goalkeeper last month, the North Londoners instead chose to bide their time in order to weigh up their options for a successor to Big Hugo in the summer.
It turns out that a similar mentality has been adopted by one of the club’s primary targets to replace the recently-retired Frenchman: Brentford’s David Raya.
Having been linked with the club on and off over the past 6 weeks, Raya spoke this morning of his latest decisions to reject Brentford’s most recent contract offers, with the Spaniard’s deal in West London expiring next summer.
As per BBC Sport, Raya justified his decisions by reiterating his immediate commitment to Brentford, maintaining that his present focus is on seeing the season out with Thomas Frank’s side rather than any long-term preoccupations to do with his contract:
“I don’t think it’s the right time to sign a contract at the moment,” said the Catalan-born shot-stopper.
“I’m really, really happy and right now I’m just thinking about doing the best for the team and trying to push for Europe.
“I was offered a new contract last year and one in January but we didn’t reach an agreement. I would like to see what happens in summer, however I’m happy at Brentford.
“For now a new contract is secondary, the most important thing is the team and the games. We’ll see where we are in May.
“You never know what’s around the corner. There’s nothing I can say about what’s going to happen in the summer. I don’t even know what’s going to happen on Saturday.”
It doesn’t take Miss Marple to figure out that this is hardly a statement of long-term commitment to the Bees from Raya.
While prima facie it seems admirable that the Catalonian would declare that his focus is on securing European football with Brentford, to me, it reads more like a delay of an inevitable departure, and that Raya is cleverly using the ostensibly professional line to blur his deeper desire of moving on this summer.
If he truly wanted to commit to the Bees, surely he would have done so already?
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