It’s business as usual for Spurs with Jack Grealish negotiations
With every other side in the Premier League’s top six busy in the transfer market, Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is engaging in his usual brinksmanship.
Jack Grealish wants to leave Aston Villa. Tottenham want to buy Jack Grealish. As has become customary for Spurs, however, there seems to be some haggling going on about the price of the 22-year-old playmaker. Given the transfer activity of their rivals, this may cause Tottenham fans some distress, but they have little reason to be concerned, even if the Grealish signing doesn’t pan out. This is nothing new.
The club’s last three major summer signings have all come at the end of the window. Davinson Sanchez was pried from Ajax on Aug. 18 of last year. Serge Aurier followed on Aug. 31. Moussa Sissoko arrived on the same date in 2016. While this strategy hasn’t been easy on the blood pressure of the Tottenham faithful, it has yielded signings. There’s no reason to think things will go differently this summer.
Grealish fits the mold of a Mauricio Pochettino signing to a tee: A young, coachable player with pace, attacking ability and promise up to his finely-gelled hair. Villa reportedly value the player at £30-40 million pounds, while Spurs’ bid was reported to be in the region of £15 million.
He’s also missed significant time with injuries over the course of his career (most notably a blow to his kidneys that he was told could have killed him), which may explain why the bid was so low. Or, given Mauricio Pochettino has asked to spend up to £150 million on new players, perhaps this is the first of multiple small-to-medium-sized deals for relatively unknown players want-away full-back Danny Rose will have to Google.
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Regardless, if Spurs plan to bring in players, why leave it so late? First, the construction of their new, nearly £1 billion stadium has put the club in something of a financial pinch compared to the other Premier League contenders. Villa, by contrast, are in dire financial straits, with cost-cutting measures due to FFP meaning they could be at the mercy of Levy’s notorious hard-line negotiating skills.
Levy’s skill as a negotiator is well-documented, with no less than Sir Alex Ferguson once stating that dealing with Levy was more painful than his hip replacement surgery. Backhanded compliments aside, it would be irresponsible not to address Levy’s belief that current transfer spending is unsustainable. No matter how many cheese bars he puts in the new stadium, critics will use this as evidence Levy doesn’t actually believe in winning.
There’s still time before the new season for Spurs to bring in new players, and given their track record it would be safe to assume nothing will happen until August. This might frustrate fans, who seem to find themselves in this position ever summer, but three and a half weeks is plenty of time for a negotiator as savvy as the Tottenham chairman.