There’s breaking news out of Germany this morning that states Tottenham Hotspur are attempting to GAZUMP the transfer of Xavi Simons to Chelsea. Simons, a 22-year-old Dutch attacker who is currently at RB Leipzig, has had a full agreement to join the Blues for what feels like months now, but his move has been seemingly held up by a number of transfer dominoes that must fall first. Spurs, who are desperate for attacking reinforcements before the end of the transfer window, are looking to take advantage.
BILD also confirms Simons and his agents are already in London to talk to Tottenham, after being given permission from Leipzig to leave training to sort out his future.
“Everything now points – as already reported – for a switch to Premier League club Tottenham where Xavi and its entourage are holding further talks today, Thursday. This is also about financial matters. From England it can be known that Xavi has very concrete (and high) ideas when it comes to wages.
“Also important: Tottenham has not yet made an official offer. But figures have already been exchanged orally between the clubs in the first exploratory talks.”
— BILD
So there it is. If BILD is correct, this comes down to not just transfer fee, but money. Specifically wages. Simons is reportedly on about £100k/wk and maybe we can extrapolate from the above that he wants something like twice that. Whatever the case, it looks like Spurs could be willing to offer more in wages than Chelsea, which opens the door to a genuine gol-dang gazumping. They certainly have the space in their wage-t0-turnover ratio to do so.
Look, we’ve all been hurt before, so I understand if you don’t want to open your heart to the idea of actually gazumping Chelsea for a player (rather than the other way around). But Simons could be a really good addition to this Tottenham side. He can play anywhere across the front line and had 15+10a last season for Leipzig in all competitions. He’s good, and if there’s an opportunity to snatch him from under Chelsea’s nose, well that’d be ok with me. It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but at this stage in the transfer window Spurs pretty much need to take another swing for the fences.