Tottenham need a replacement for Jermain Defoe, and could do worse than Michy Batshuayi, who they could try to sign thanks to the contacts made which one infamously annoyed Manchester United’s record breaking manager.
When the summer comes around, Tottenham Hotspur fans will expect their side to dip back into the transfer market, even if the results are not likely to be as cataclysmic as last summer.
The end product of selling Gareth Bale and spending £100 million hasn’t really amounted to much, save for a lot of disruption at the club.
There are two areas they do need to strengthen though clearly, a new left-back to offer competition for Danny Rose and Ezequiel Fryers, and a new striker to replace Jermain Defoe.
Roberto Soldado and Emmanuel Adebayor are effectively carrying the can on their own at present, and while there is hope Harry Kane can step up, at present it’s just that.
Soldado himself has struggled badly since arriving, and a fresh face to liven up the attack is sorely needed.
A name mentioned a lot is Christian Benteke, but Aston Villa have already proved reluctant to sell at anything below what would be termed ‘silly money’, while the striker signed a contract extension last summer.
A player who is considered to be the ‘next Benteke’ to come out of Belgium and take the Premier League by storm is Michy Batshuayi.
The Belgian has netted 19 goals this season in the Jupiler Pro League, and at 20-years-old has been catching the attention of Arsenal, Everton, and PSV.
Yet could Tottenham have an edge thanks to his current club Standard Liege?
The Belgian side were the club who Ezequiel Fryers was signed from, as Spurs circumvented a Premier League tribunal which would have cost millions, had they simply snapped him out when out of contract at Manchester United.
Fryers signed for Liege after United made a switch to Spurs difficult, only to make a switch to White Hart Lane months later, angering Sir Alex Ferguson.
The Manchester United boss vented via the media at Daniel Levy, threatening to report Spurs to the FA, but didn’t do so in the end, seemingly because they couldn’t find any hard evidence of any wrongdoing.
Whether Spurs planned it all along remains a tale untold to this day, but what’s clear is that they were able to strike up enough of a rapport with Standard Liege to convince them to sell Fryers after just a few months.
This could help them should they go for Batshuayi, who would be the exact type of striker required to complement Soldado and Adebayor, and one would not expect to start week in and week out. Even the Europa League experience with Spurs would be a positive learning curve for him.
image: © mikehamm
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