With no real football (no, international football doesn’t count) to talk about, what’s left but injury reports and transfer rumors? I have one of the latter for you — according to Julian Plettenberg in Germany, Tottenham “can see themselves” triggering Joao Palhinha’s €30m purchase clause this summer when his season long loan expires.
Is this a rumor or just connecting the dots? I dunno, could be either. Probably both. It’s not a difficult line to draw, that’s for sure. While I and others can publicly wonder about the makeup of Spurs’ midfield with a 31-year-old Palhinha and a 29-year-old Rodrigo Bentancur central to Thomas Frank’s plan (Where’s the passer, String? Where the f**k’s the passer?) there’s no doubt that a) Palhinha is extremely good at the things he’s good at and b) Thomas Frank seems to love the guy. Put him in a midfield that allows him to just tackle dudes and score the occasional banger and he’s 100% a plus add.
Now, Plettenberg is a Bayern guy so he’s obviously getting his info from the Bayern side of the equation. It’s no secret that Palhinha doesn’t fit in at Bayern and they’re looking to offload him, so this deal does make a ton of sense. Honestly, I can see it happening. I can even get behind it! Doing it, along with extending Bentancur, does meaningfully narrow the paths to actually signing a midfielder who can pass, though — it would require letting Yves Bissouma leave next summer on a free transfer when his contract expires and/or selling Pape Sarr.
Or maybe none of those things happen and we just continue to abandon central midfield and pump crosses into the box from now until eternity. That’s a choice and a thing that could happen! I think it would make me pretty irritated and not especially fond of Thomas Frank’s tactical choices, but hey, that’s why I’m a blogger and not the head coach of one of the ten richest clubs in world football.
Regardless, barring a catastrophic injury to Palhinha sometime this season I think this happens. It just makes way too much sense.