Spurs News Round-up: Transfer Talk and Project Restart

As many football fans wait impatiently for the return of the Premier League, clubs are in the news for a number of reasons. At Spurs, transfer talk is hotting up and while rumours of selling our best players have largely been quiet in recent days, there’s no shortage of gossip in regards to potential arrivals.

Existing players have also been claiming some headlines and in the case of Dele Alli, the reasons were somewhat unfortunate.

Dele Attacked

Dele Alli
Dele Alli

Dele has a reputation for attracting negative press at times but on this occasion, he couldn’t be blamed for this unpleasant situation. In the early hours of Wednesday May 13, burglars broke into his house in North London where Dele is currently in lockdown, along with his brother and their two partners.

Items of jewellery were stolen and Dele was struck in the incident, suffering what was described as minor facial injuries. No arrests have yet been made following the attack but the player has handed CCTV footage over to the police and naturally we wish him well.

Harry the Philanthropist

harry kane
Harry Kane

It was nice to see Harry Kane involved in stories that weren’t linking him with a move away from the club. Last week, it was announced that the striker had taken over the shirt sponsorship at Leyton Orient and that he had donated the space to three major causes.

The Os will now have logos featuring the mental health charity Mind, and the local Haven House Children’s Hospice while Orient’s home strip will carry a message of thanks to frontline workers. 10% of replica shirt sales will go to these causes.

Harry has an affinity with the club having made his professional debut while on loan with Orient in 2011. He made 18 appearances for the East London side, scoring five times, and this is a nice good news story to balance things out this week.

Potential Arrivals

Transfer talk has taken a little bit of a back seat this week while football tends to focus on the Premier League and the questions surrounding Project Restart. There have, however, been some rumours to run the rule over and the majority of these concern potential arrivals at the new White Hart Lane.

Bournemouth’s Ryan Fraser has impressed during his time on the South Coast but, having signed up from Aberdeen back in 2013, this has been something of a breakthrough season for the Scottish international.

A winger, Fraser is due to be out of contract next month: He’s said to be keen on a move to Spurs and with financial uncertainty around his current employers, Tottenham are naturally eyeing up what could be a bargain price.

Elsewhere, with doubts growing over the future of Jan Vertonghen, it’s said that Spurs could be in the market for a new centre half this summer. One name that keeps emerging is that of Chilean international Guillermo Maripan who has been with Monaco for a short spell, having signed from Alaves in 2019.

Moving over slightly and hitting the flanks, Brazilian international left back Alex Sandro is another name in the frame. At 29 years old, the player has vast experience and has been with current club Juventus for the last five years. Reports suggest that Serge Aurier would be offered as part of the deal and that’s likely to please some Spurs fans if it were to come to fruition.

Of course, one of the big questions relating to all of this surrounds the football transfer window and what revised dates there might be. Having a direct effect on this is Project Restart so where do we stand in terms of a return for top flight football in England?

Starting Up

While Project Restart has been a dominant catch phrase surrounding football in the last few days, there is no definite date set of the return of the Premier League. Many observers suspect that June 12 is the intended day that football will be back on our horizon but that’s far from established and it’s widely felt that the suggestion is ‘optimistic’.

There have, however, been some developments in this area and we should know more as we start to move through this week. It’s expected that players will be allowed to go back to full training in small groups with a view to building from there until teams are able to compete on the pitch.

Following the return of the German Bundesliga at the weekend, other countries will shortly follow suit and we will see leagues start to come back onto the calendar. Although the empty stadiums in Germany produced a strange backdrop that wasn’t to everyone’s liking, the simple fact that top flight European football was back was enough to get fans excited and optimistic about the weeks that follow.

As for Spurs and the Premier League, that situation remains in the distance for now but the tide is slowly turning and it now seems to be a question of when, rather than if, the Premier League comes back.

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