Manchester City’s interest in Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg is a ‘serious concern’ to Tottenham Hotspur in their own pursuit of the Southampton midfielder – that’s according to The Daily Record.
The newspaper reports that City boss Pep Guardiola is ‘ready to go head-to-head’ with his Tottenham counterpart Jose Mourinho over Hojbjerg, whose admission that he wants to play ‘at an even higher level’ has seen him stripped of his captaincy and made available for transfer .
Spurs are said to have been confident they could better any rival bid from Ajax for the Danish midfielder.
And The Times has claimed the London club were hoping he would cost around £20 million – that’s despite Southampton’s £35m valuation of the player, who they could lose for free at the end of his contract next summer.
The Pep Effect
But City – who, according to The Daily Record, are ready to spend heavily in the upcoming transfer window and who, in Guardiola, employ the coach Hojbjerg knows from Bayern Munich – could prove tough to fend off for Tottenham.
Despite their friendship at Barcelona, there is now thought to be little love lost between Mourinho and Guardiola, whose rivalry intensified as the respective managers of Real Madrid and Barcelona, then Manchester United and City.
Tottenham, Manchester City or neither – where will Southampton’s Hojbjerg end up?
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