Thomas Frank has been dealt another blow in the transfer market after Eberechi Eze decided to join Arsenal.
TBR Football exclusively revealed that Arsenal have agreed a deal for Eze, and the England international has decided to reject Tottenham in favour of a move to the Emirates.
Spurs’ £55 million acquisition of Mohammed Kudus from West Ham stands as the club’s marquee signing thus far, and while the Ghanaian international impressed on his debut, there is a growing need for further additions.
Despite winning the Europa League last season, Tottenham recorded an abysmal 17th-placed finish in the Premier League, and the pressure will be on for Frank to avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessor.
However, with another transfer rejection staring Daniel Levy in the face, Simon Jordan has offered his take on how the situation panned out at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Tottenham could not have done more to convince Eberechi Eze
When addressing the situation live on talkSPORT, Jordan suggested that Levy had little power in preventing Eze from joining Arsenal, but the Tottenham faithful will only see yet another player slip through their fingers.
“Now you’ve got a situation with Eze, and I’m not defending Daniel in any shape or form, I’m giving an alternative view rather than the one dimensional binary outlook, which is Spurs have balls’d it up again. Is anybody under the illusion that the agent wouldn’t have been trying to achieve the best outcome for the player, and Arsenal may well have already been in the background for some period of time?
“And perhaps Palace were looking at playing all ends against the middle to get the best price they could, which is fair play to them, and so they should and have managed to achieve that. And the agent and the player have been given a series of opportunities.
“Now, if you want to make the argument that Tottenham had a march to steal, and they could have bent the player’s wrist back, and they could have bent Palace’s wrist back and told them when they were going to sign him, and so and so forth. You can make that argument, and those that believe that everything Daniel Levy does is wrong, you know, on one hand, we will constantly suggest that Daniel Levy is the deal maker extraordinaire.
“In another breath, we’ll turn around and say that he isn’t, and doesn’t do the deals. Now people will say, Well, ah, hang on, that’s because he’s a deal maker extraordinaire when he’s selling.”
Tottenham had looked set to sign Eze after agreeing personal terms with the player, and only the final details surrounding the payment structure stood in the way of the move.
Spurs faced a similar situation earlier this summer with Morgan Gibbs-White, whom they believed would sign on the dotted line after activating his release clause; however, the player completed a dramatic U-turn instead, extending his contract with Nottingham Forest.
James Maddison’s ACL injury forced the Lilywhites back into the market for an attacking midfielder and a long-term replacement for the Englishman.
And now it is back to the drawing board for Frank, and as TBR Football understands, Tottenham are now targeting Bilal El Khannouss of Leicester City and have submitted an official enquiry.
Tottenham supporters will focus on Daniel Levy’s failure
Although the fact remains it would have been near impossible for Spurs to convince boyhood Arsenal fan Eze to honour his agreement with the club once their North London rivals made their move, the result will still sting for the supporters.
Even with Champions League football on offer, Tottenham are struggling to finalise deals for their main targets.
And as Jordan alludes to, the transfer failings, rather than their repeated efforts, will be the focus of the fan base.
“But in the outcome world, they’ll have their right to say it, because the outcome, which is what we all look at, no matter what the story is, no matter what the journey is – Daniel Levy hasn’t delivered an outcome.”