Tottenham Hotspur still want a new left-sided centre-back.
The north London club were in the market for a new player in this position all summer long, and after driving up a number of dead ends, they settled on bringing Clement Lenglet to the club on loan.
Unfortunately for Spurs, Lenglet hasn’t come close to solving their defensive problems, and with his loan move, notably, not including an option to buy, one has to imagine that Spurs will be back in the market for a player in this position before too long.
It’s no secret that Tottenham have been desperate to sign Alessandro Bastoni for quite some time, but interestingly, he is not Spurs’ top target in this position.
Indeed, Antonio Conte’s so-called dream signing in this position is reportedly Josko Gvardiol.
It has been claimed that Gvardiol is preferred to Bastoni, and while that may seem strange on the surface, the Croatian showed on Thursday evening just why this is the case.
Gvardiol was tasked with getting his nation through the World Cup group stages on Thursday against a very talented Belgium team, and boy did he show up.
The stats barely tell the story. He made just one tackle – a last-minute game-saver, but his all-around showing was immense.
At the age of just 20, he was commanding this back four as if he was veteran, and he constantly made sure that the likes of Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku were unable to make anything happen, registering nine clearances, while on the ball he was impeccable, completing over 95 per cent of his passes and completely 75 per cent of his long pass attempts.
Simply put, Gvardiol looked like the real deal on the world’s biggest stage, and it’s not hard to see why Conte wants this player in the heart of his defence ahead of Bastoni.
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