£18.5m Tottenham player to reportedly be sold in the summer, position is Poch achilles heel
COMMENT By Richard Parks
Tottenham have made their minds up.
Vincent Janssen will not be at the club next season, irrespective of whether Fenerbahce attempt to convert his season-long loan into a permanent deal.
Football London report that the Dutch striker, 23, is in line to return to north London in the summer but he will not hang around for long and will soon “be moving on elsewhere”.
Good riddance, that is how many Spurs fans will view it, after the striker’s big-money move from AZ Alkmaar in the summer of 2016 (£18.5million, according to the Daily Mail) turned sour.
Janssen had a torrid time at Spurs in his first season, scoring just six goals in 38 appearances – four of which were from the penalty spot – and moved to Turkey last September after the deadline day signing of Fernando Llorente.
The striker was a regular in the first half of the season for Fenerbahce although he did not exactly set the world on fire in Turkey, with 13 games yielding just three goals and four assists before injury struck.
Not that Llorente has fared much better in the role of back-up to goal king Harry Kane.
The Spaniard has been regularly praised by Mauricio Pochettino but his 29 appearances have yielded just five goals, three of which have come against minnows in the FA Cup.
So little does the manager trust Llorente that Son Heung-Min has been used as the spearhead since Kane suffered an ankle injury.
It appears that Pochettino’s recruitment achilles heel is sourcing a striker who can deputise effectively for goal-a-game merchant Kane.
Janssen is a striker who came to Tottenham on the back of a great goal-scoring record in the Dutch Eredivisie but found he just couldn’t produce in the Premier League.
With Kane blocking his first-team path, he didn’t get a sustained run in the first team. However, you know when you go to a club with an established striker that you will need to take whatever chances you get, and Janssen couldn’t produce under the pressure.
He has a Spurs contract that run until 2020, but even ace negotiator Daniel Levy will do well to make a profit on the Dutchman unless he recovers soon from a foot injury and starts banging in the goals.
In other Tottenham news, it can be revealed that the club have ripped up the contract of a defender.
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