If you were hoping against hope that Tottenham Hotspur might be keeping a hold on Brennan Johnson for the rest of the season, you might want to revise your expectations. According to the Telegraph, Crystal Palace is increasingly confident that Johnson will be a Palace player in time for the club to play Newcastle this weekend. Sam Wallace and John Percy write that Johnson is set to have a medical at Selhurst Park in the next 24 hours, with a transfer fee of just under £35m to be confirmed shortly afterwards. The window officially opens on January 1, 2026.
I think I’ve said all I want to say about Brennan Johnson and his fit at Tottenham Hotspur the last time I wrote about this transfer and I won’t bother repeating myself. I will, however, express some hope that Spurs selling their top scorer from last year is a statement of intent that they will bring in attacking reinforcements next month, and that making this move now, at the very start of the window, implies that they have some moves that they want to make from the jump. I know, I know — naïve of me, this is Tottenham, but choosing hope is always more fun than resigned indifference or negativity. I’ll be that Pollyanna so you don’t have to.
There are plenty of reasons why this is the case, but it’s clear that Johnson is not going to repeat his 18 goal contributions this season, and there are a lot of good reasons to move him on to a place where he can hopefully be successful. Palace certainly seems like a better fit than Thomas Frank’s Tottenham Hotspur at the moment. And after that? Trust the process, I guess. What else can we do?