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Tottenham tried to sign Moussa Dembele on deadline day

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According to Foot Mercato, Tottenham made a late attempt to sign Moussa Dembele on deadline day but failed in their pursuit and had to settle with Carlos Vinicius.

Manchester United were interested in the 24-year-old but ended up with Edinson Cavani and Paris Saint-Germain were interested but ended up with Moise Kean. We were also interested, but Foot Mercato say Olympique Lyonnais rejected our approach.

What would Dembele bring to our squad?

Goals and assists aplenty. The French U21 international has made 98 appearances in all competitions for Lyon, scoring 44 goals with 13 assists (1 goal/assist every 1.72 games).

In 2018/19, Dembele scored 15 goals in 33 Ligue 1 games. He created 30 chances, won 50/104 aerial duels (48%), had 90 shots with 45% hitting the target and made 27/43 successful dribbles.

In 2019/20, he scored 16 goals in 27 Ligue 1 games. Dembele created 22 chances, won 69/146 aerial duels (47%), had 56 shots with 48% hitting the target and made 24/60 successful dribbles.

The 24-year-old was prolific before his move to France too, scoring 15 goals in 43 Championship games for Fulham (2015/16), 17 goals in 29 Premiership games for Celtic (2016/17) and 9 goals in 25 Premiership games for Celtic (2017/18).

Could we return for him?

I don’t think so. We have Harry Kane, Carlos Vinicius and Heung-min Son who can operate at centre-forward, so it may take injury to one of the trio before we considering bringing in another striker.

I can’t see Manchester United or Paris Saint-Germain returning for Dembele either unless their new striker arrivals struggle. Lyon won’t want to sell their best striker midway through a campaign, as it would leave them

It’s worth noting that we were linked with Danny Ings, Loren Moron, Wout Weghorst, Callum Wilson, Troy Deeney, Vedat Muriqi, Patrik Schick, Arkadiusz Milik, Robin Quaison, Rhian Brewster, Habib Diallo, Josh King, Ollie Watkins, Alexander Sørloth, Bas Dost and Christian Benteke over the summer, so it may not even be Dembele that we make a move for in January.

Harry Kane hasn’t managed an injury-free season for some time. He missed 10 Premier League games in 2018/19 and nine Premier League games in 2019/20, so he’s hoping he can stay fit this campaign.

In other news, could Danny Rose, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jack Clarke leave Tottenham on deadline day?

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Sports journalist who is an avid football fan, enjoys debunking transfer rumours, loves to write pieces about players out in the cold and takes a large amount of pride getting a predicted XI 100% correct.