Liam Scales about to join Celtic and the footix all hyped up about Kane
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There’s a dedicated Celtic transfer thread mate
Eh, this is a SRFC related transfer
Need to set up a dedicated SRFC transfer thread
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Great bit of biz from Atalanta.
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Harry Kane’s rebellion: Why he’s doing it, Spurs’ determination not to sell and the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ Levy says never happened
Harry Kane’s attempts to force a way out of Tottenham Hotspur intensified on Monday when he failed to report for pre-season duties.
Kane had been expected at Hotspur Way after three weeks off following the end of Euro 2020 for COVID-19 and basic fitness tests, but instead remained at his home in north London.
After an eventful day that Kane hopes will force Spurs’ hand and smooth the way for his desired move to Manchester City, The Athletic can reveal that:
- Kane spoke to a senior non-English Manchester City player prior to Monday to inform him of his desire to join the club.
- Some at City became aware over the weekend that Kane’s intention was not to train or play for Spurs again.
- After Monday’s no-show, Kane does not plan to return to Hotspur Way until he is granted his wish to leave.
- Tottenham’s position is that they will not sell to another Premier League club under any circumstances (as was the case when they moved on Luka Modric and Gareth Bale). Sources at the club also insist that no “gentleman’s agreement” has ever been made.
- Tottenham’s frustrations with Kane date back a year to when the striker’s post-holiday quarantining delayed his return to pre-season training and was perceived to have affected his performance on the opening weekend against Everton.
- During the same summer, City held a strong interest in signing Kane until their attention was diverted to Lionel Messi.
- Senior City sources have spoken of their expectation for “big signings” beyond the anticipated £100-million acquisition of Jack Grealish. They remain confident that a deal can be done for Kane.
- Senior Spurs figures are furious at the course of action Kane has taken and will fine him if he does not return.
As it stands, Tottenham are making no plans for life after Kane. Many of the squad are resigned to him leaving, The Athletic understands, but the reality is that Spurs remain resolute in their stance: should a foreign club offer in the region of £150 million they would consider it. Otherwise, Kane stays.
A replacement striker is not on managing director of football Fabio Paratici’s list of targets (though they do admire Fiorentina’s Dusan Vlahovic), and Kane’s leverage remains minimal since he has three years left on his contract. The club did not comment publicly about the situation on Monday as they consider it an internal matter. They plan to hit Kane with a substantial fine if he continues not to report for pre-season duties. And under the terms of his contract, The Athletic understands that Spurs could start an internal disciplinary procedure and then potentially sanction Kane according to the club’s conduct rules.
Kane hopes that by staying away from training he will make it harder for Spurs to resist City’s advances, and give himself greater leverage than if he behaved as normal and went to training. Ultimately though that tactic will only be successful if City get close to what Tottenham are asking for and Daniel Levy changes his mind about only selling abroad. At the moment that is not the case, with their £100 million bid in June considerably down on what Levy would even consider, and with no new contact understood to have taken place between the two clubs in light of Monday’s events. Barcelona and Real Madrid, perhaps once options for an elite English player, are not viable due to the Spanish clubs’ financial concerns.
City are understood to be willing to go as high as £130 million, but unless Spurs change their stance on not selling to a Premier League club then that would not make a difference. Even with some at the club using words like “unprofessional”, “unnecessary” and “disrespectful” to describe Kane’s behaviour on Monday.
It is important, though, to understand the full context of how we have arrived at this point, and what it means for the next four weeks before the transfer window closes.
Ever since his days in the Spurs academy, Kane has always been a beacon of professionalism. It was this that catapulted him far beyond peers who when they were teenagers were considered more talented.
But, last year, for one of the first and only times in his Spurs career, there was a degree of exasperation towards him at the club. While away on holiday in the Bahamas last August, the UK government’s rules changed and the country was put on the red list. It meant when Kane returned home shortly before he was due back at Hotspur Way, he had to self-isolate for 14 days, which meant he missed almost a chunk of pre-season training. It was not Kane’s fault that the rules changed when he was away but by coming back when he did, it meant his and the side’s pre-season plans were disrupted.
Some at the club, including then head coach Jose Mourinho, were irritated by the late return and felt it contributed to a sluggish performance from Kane in the 1-0 home defeat to Everton in September 2020 on the opening weekend of the season. If you watch that game back, you will see Kane looks nothing like his usual self, barely running and playing poorly. An exasperated Mourinho loses his cool with a few minutes remaining: “Come on, let’s make a fucking effort, eh?”. Though it is worth noting that Kane had continued to train even while on holiday and then back home once isolating.
He was also quickly into his stride the following week — registering a goal and four assists in a 5-2 win away at Southampton, before ending the Premier League season as the division’s top scorer and assister. But it was a signal that cracks were starting to form.
Around the time of Kane’s holiday in Bahamas, another theme that has become more and more prominent in the subsequent year began to emerge: Manchester City’s interest in the England captain.
City had been on the look-out for a striker last summer and had a significant amount to spend on reinforcements. They held a genuine interest in Kane, but instead decided to pursue Messi once he made it clear that he wanted to join them. In the end they could not get a deal done for Messi, and by the time he revealed he was staying at Barcelona, the new season was about to start and they opted not to go after Kane.
A year on, there is growing confidence at City that, against the odds, they can reach an agreement with Levy. The expected signing of Grealish will not affect their ability to do so, given that they have a number of saleable assets, including Bernardo Silva and Gabriel Jesus, that they hope to generate funds from, on top of a raft of academy products and former loanees. When City were looking for strikers last summer they wanted either a traditional No 9 or a false nine capable of dropping off. In Kane, they believe they would have both types of player. And the City hierarchy want to ensure their manager has the best possible chance of continuing his success in the final two seasons of his contract, and part of that will be a renewed assault on the Champions League.
Kane, as has been well documented, has similarly lofty ambitions. But he initially did not intend to boycott training, hoping instead that the situation could be resolved before he was due back on Monday.
The lack of a resolution though has changed the picture, while nothing since The Athletic first reported his desire to leave four months ago had altered his view that he needs to leave Spurs to compete for the biggest prizes. On Monday itself, Kane could point to the fact that Spurs were drawn against Portugal’s Pacos de Ferreira or Larne of Northern Ireland for a place in the third-tier Europa Conference League as evidence of how far off they are from winning important titles.
Back around the time of Mourinho’s sacking though, and then in May when there were widespread reports of Kane telling Spurs he wanted out, and him hinting as much on Gary Neville’s The Overlap podcast, the view was still that Kane not reporting for training was extremely unlikely.
This has been a route that former Spurs stars like Dimitar Berbatov, Modric and Bale had gone down to force a move, but few saw Kane following suit. Albeit in different circumstances, supporters hoped he would continue to play even while he wanted out, in the way that Christian Eriksen did in the first half of the 2019-20 season.
During the Euros though, Kane is understood to have let some of his England team-mates know that he was considering not returning to pre-season training. By that point, Kane’s Spurs team-mates were aware of his desire to leave the club, and generally understood. There was no ill will towards him for wanting to leave, and Monday’s no-show was not considered a big surprise given the majority of the squad expected him to move on.
But the reality is that despite Spurs players bracing themselves for Kane’s departure, he remains in a bind because of the six-year deal he signed in 2018. The contract was lucrative — doubling his wages to around £200,000 a week — but the length of it handed the power to Levy. And Kane only needs to look at the experience of the likes of Eriksen and Danny Rose to know that it is extremely hard to leave Spurs once Levy holds that kind of power. Kyle Walker managed to leave in 2017 for around £50 million, but only after negotiations that one source described to The Athletic as “like having blood in your piss” and with then-manager Mauricio Pochettino happy to let him go.
The question has also been posed as to how Bale was able to leave Spurs in 2013, a year after signing a four-year contract, but Kane remains so powerless. The reality is that without a release clause or other terms that would facilitate a departure, Kane’s bargaining position is weak — at the mercy of a “gentleman’s agreement” that Spurs deny making. Now represented by his father and brother, Kane has a job on his hands to convince Levy to make a sale that would be extremely out of character. Especially as sources close to him have indicated that Kane’s public agitations will only have entrenched the Tottenham chairman’s position further.
From as soon as Kane made it clear he wanted to leave, those who know Levy felt there was no way he would relent — and that eventually the interested clubs would walk away in frustration. This has been the case with Chelsea, who will not be drawn into a battle for Kane despite their admiration for the striker.
City, though, are not going anywhere, happy to play the long game as Kane tries to exert more and more pressure on Levy. It is understood that Pep Guardiola has no back-up options in mind: despite having a list of alternative options earlier in the year, he only wants Kane.
There are some close to the situation who believe if Levy can generate a huge fee then he can portray the sale as a success and one that was necessary for Spurs’ long-term sustainability. He will also be aware that fan sentiment has started to turn, with many supporters viewing Kane not reporting for training as beyond the pale. Selling him would not be quite as unthinkable now from a public relations perspective as it would have been in previous years.
It has been suggested that Kane could stay another year, by which time he will have two years left on his contract and more leverage. The transfer market may have partially recovered by then having been badly depressed by the COVID-19 pandemic. And, if recent history is anything to go by, looking at the cases of Modric at Spurs and Luis Suarez and Carlos Tevez at Liverpool and Manchester City respectively, even if a wantaway player does not get their move straight away, they generally do a year or so later.
The problem is that Kane turns 29 next July and by then it will be even harder for a club to justify a nine-figure transfer fee.
Technically, next summer, Kane could effectively serve notice that he wants to leave and do so because he would be out of the protected period of his contract. But doing so would leave him and any buyer liable for huge amounts of compensation to Spurs under Article 17 of FIFA regulations, and it is not considered a genuine possibility.
Hence the feeling of urgency from him and City. They each desperately want this done before the end of August, just as much as Levy is resolute in his opposition to it happening.
Consider Monday’s no-show, then, simply the latest manoeuvre in a battle that is expected to rumble on all the way until the August 31 transfer deadline.
He’s one of their own.
surely Spurs should cash in
Harry taking inspiration from Spurs legend Berbatov.
They should and I think they will. Levy will dig in as per usual but eventually sell when he gets every ounce out of the deal. But he will have made a song and dance out of it first and be adamant he won’t sell. When the inevitable eventually goes through Spurs are left with a few deflated senior players and a last minute dash through the shopping aisles to get in a few players with the fee hot in their bank account.
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Will they? Didn’t they make the same mistake with Dele Alli? Asked for too much when his stock was high and are now stuck with a misfiring dud.
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All the footix going at it here this morning.
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Justice for Harry
Demiral joining Atalanta. Great deal for Atalanta, Demiral > Romero and a nice little profit secured.
Loan with €30m option. Lovato already signed so he will replace Caldara who returned to Milan.
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Classy work from Man City. A lovely club.