£70m is nice, but Spurs will lose Maur than a player if they sell Alli
IT would be the sort of deal that might even bring a grin to Daniel Levy’s poker face.
Pay £5million for a League One player and sell him for £70m two years later. Ker-ching. That’s one of the new stands paid for.
Call it the Dele Alli Stand, perhaps.
Not only that, you don’t have to pay him the £150,000 a week he will probably soon be demanding and have Harry Kane, Christian Eriksen and Co banging on your door pretty quickly.
So, if Real Madrid, Barcelona or Paris Saint-Germain come calling – and Pochettino hardly put them off the scent by describing Alli as “very special”, with “unbelievable qualities” and “one of the best players in the Premier League” – Levy might be tempted.
It might even represent good business.
Alli has not been consistently brilliant and has a lot of maturing to do.
But if there is one stand-out reason, among many, why Levy should not be countenancing ANY offer, it is Pochettino himself.
By lavishing yet more praise on Alli, Pochettino was as good as telling the Spurs board, “Sell him and I’m off too”.
And losing one of the best young managers in the game would be disastrous. Pochettino signed a new contract last year, tying him to the club until 2021.
But it would be astonishing if there was no sort of release
WHEN reports emerged that Jose Fonte wanted to leave Southampton, it was double-take time. Handed in a transfer request? Who does that any more? That went out with sock-tags and black boots. It’s a shames for Saints, but ata least Fonte (left), wanting a different challenge in the final stages of his career, has done the decent thing. clause. Make no mistake, Pochettino is an ambitious coach and his ambitions extend beyond scrapping for a top-four place and flogging your best players.
Ri g ht at thi is s moment, there mayy be no obvious alternative destinations for him. Yet, will clubs such as Bayern Munich, PSG, even Barcelona and Real Madrid ALL keep their current managers in the summer?
Quite possible, but far from certain. And when the next blue-chip vacancy comes up, you can bet Pochettino will be high on its shortlist. Departure EVERTON have won the Sponsorship Deal of the Century. Finch Farm is a decent training complex on the outskirts of Liverpool, and is being sponsored – in combination with a shirt deal yet to be announced – to the tune of £75million over five years by USM from the Champions League at the group stage was a blow and an unexpected blip in his progress. But Pochettino’s stock remain remains steeply on the rise rise. He has Tottenham p punching above t their wage bill and clearly has a talent for developing y young stars. He also, in general, cuts a d i st i n gui shed figurehead for his club. This latest spectacular spell of form from Alli, though, will bring Pochettino’s future into focus. It will be a game-changer for Levy and Spurs. Rejecting a £70m bid would actually be the Holdings. A USM’s director said: “The naming of Finch Farm... provides USM and the businesses in our group unique global media exposure.” Quite how a link with Everton’s training ground will help them is anyone’s guess, but it’s a great deal for Everton who don’t even own Finch Farm – they lease it from Liverpool City Council.
It gives them the clout to splash easy part, but if you are classed as a £ 70m player, you want £70m player wages ... not the £55,000 a week you’re on now.
That might jar, but it is a stark, financial fact of the modern footballing world.
There would be a knock-on effect to the whole wage-scale.
But, ironically, that might mean Spurs attracting the sort of established big-time players Pochettino feels will be needed to be a major force here and in Europe.
With the costs of the new stadium kicking in, of course, Levy has to be financially sensible.
But to keep a manager of Pochettino’s talent and ambition, he surely, surely knows he has to buy players of Alli’s quality ... not sell them. £11m on Charlton’s Ademola Lookman (left) and to complete the Morgan Schneiderlin deal.
The main shareholder of USM is Alisher Usmanov, who has a 30 per cent stake in Arsenal and is a mate of Everton shareholder Farhad Moshiri.
But it’s not a big investor in one club investing in another – that’s against the rules. It’s just the Sponsorship Deal of the Century.