Don’t you love the transfer window? Don’t answer that. While Spurs anxiously wait for something — anything — that resembles an incoming transfer window, instead we’re stuck with increasingly hallucinogenic reports of continuing exits. There’s the whole Antonin Kinsky thing, which we thoroughly dissected yesterday, but there’s an even stupider rumor floating around the Italian transfer media that suggests Juventus want to bring in Randal Kolo Muani this month on loan.
Reports from Gianluca DiMarzio (via Sky Sports Italy) say Juventus are pushing PSG and/or Spurs to recall Kolo Muani from his season-long loan at Tottenham so they can instead bring him back to Juventus, where he spent last season on loan. It’s not especially clear what Spurs would get out of this deal, minus the services of one of their few remaining attackers, and indeed according to Fabrizio Romano not even PSG are especially keen on the idea, considering Juventus unsuccessfully failed to bring in RKM permanently last summer which led to him ending up at Tottenham.
And even in the Italian media, I’m not seeing anything concrete that say PSG or Tottenham are interested in making this happen. Point of fact, the only thing I’m really seeing are reports from Italy that say “the biggest obstacle to RKM joining Juventus is Tottenham.” Which, yeah, duh.
Now look, it’s not like Kolo Muani has been especially effective while in North London. He had 10 goals and 2 assists for Juventus last season, but only has two goals in all competitions thus far for Spurs and has looked almost disinterested at times this season, certainly not the experienced attacker that we thought we were loaning. That said, with Richarlison out for a couple of months and Dominic Solanke only freshly back from a long term injury of his own, letting RKM go would mean Spurs have Big Dom, Mathys Tel, and Dane Scarlett, with only Solanke and Scarlett currently eligible to play in the Champions League. Doesn’t seem like a particularly great idea to me, unless Spurs decide to bring in another attacker. That’s something Johan Lange and Thomas Frank have said they’re interested in doing, but we’ve seen no evidence they’re actually working towards a specific target and there are only three days left in the window. It might work out that a replacement player would do better in the role than Kolo Muani — Lord knows I’m willing to entertain that notion — but until then, I’ll settle for the warm body.
So until I see evidence to the contrary, I’m just going to assume that this is Juventus and the Italian sports media infrastructure trying to make “fetch” happen, GRETCHEN, and I’m not going to worry about it.