Why Inter’s reported Erik Lamela approach is likely to be rebuffed by Tottenham Hotspur’s Daniel Levy

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Erik Lamela faces an uncertain future at Tottenham Hotspur and Inter Milan want to offer the Argentine an escape route.

On reflection, that long-term hip injury could hardly have come at a worse time for Erik Lamela. After two stop-start seasons at White Hart Lane, the impish Argentine finally started to show why Spurs splashed out a club-record £30 million to sign him from AS Roma during the 2015/16 season, according to the Daily Mail.

In 28 Premier League starts, Lamela scored nine goals and produced another nine assists. Consistency was still a pipe dream but the jinking winger was finally starting to leave Spurs’ infamous ‘Beatles’ behind and lay the foundations for a successful solo career in North London.

Lamela is still yet to fully realise his potential

And then came the disaster of 2016/17, a relentless series of injuries limiting Lamela to just six Premier League starts, his most recent coming in October. According to The Guardian, Lamela is hoping to return to the first-team fold by September but the question is whether he will still be a Tottenham player by then.

Because FC Inter News reports that Inter Milan, who have been linked for a number of seasons, remain as interested as ever in a player who is still just 25 years of age.

The report adds that Lamela is keen to return to Italy where he starred with Roma, earning that big-money move to a post-Gareth Bale Spurs by scoring and assisting 30 Serie A goals in 2012/13. He also knows Inter’s director of football Walter Sabatini well, having worked with him at the Stadio Olimpico.

Short shrift?

However, the report claims that Spurs could let Lamela go for just £15 million – half the price they paid for him four years ago. And that raises a few questions.

After all, penny-pinching chairman Daniel Levy is hardly renowned for letting players leave on the cheap, as seen by his extorting £53 million from Manchester City for Kyle Walker, a player no longer wanted by manager Mauricio Pochettino, per The Guardian.

Furthermore, Inter are hardly short of cash, meaning claims that they want to land Lamela on the cheap seem on. If they earn around £45 million from the sale of Manchester United target Ivan Perisic, as reported by The Guardian, it appears unlikely their Chinese owners would attempt to replace the Croatian with a cut-price bargain.

Levy doesn’t let players go on the cheap and its unlikely he’s about to start now.