Club vice-chairman slams Tottenham over how they handled deadline day transfer

Tottenham were extremely busy on transfer deadline day, managing to secure the signing of Giovani Lo Celso and Ryan Sessegnon.

Tottenham reportedly paid around £25 million for Sessegnon’s signature which could rise to £30m with performance-related add-ons according to the BBC. Midfielder Josh Onomah also joined the Cottagers as a part of the deal.

Fulham vice-chairman Tony Khan has now slammed Spurs for the way they approached the negotiation and said that it was Tottenham’s late approach that made it impossible for Fulham to bring in replacements since they had to ensure compliance to FFP.

Tony, son of owner Shahid, said that the club were prepared to keep Sessegnon and insisted that Tottenham had to meet their valuation when they made their approach in the last two weeks of the window.

Speaking to Fulham’s official website, Khan said, “We heard from them [Tottenham] for the first time two weeks before the close of the window.

“We had been making all our deals under the assumption that Ryan could wind the contract down and they were not going to offer us anything. I was totally prepared for that.

“It seemed like it might be a likely scenario when he still had not heard from them a couple of weeks out, which is why I was doing loan deals where we knew the club would compliant with Financial Fair Play [FFP] rules.

“We had got three of our top four targets on loan but there was still a lot of uncertainty about what we could do in the rest of the window after we got Ivan Cavaleiro, Anthony Knockaert and Harry Arter.

“It turned out we were not able to buy any players because this transaction had been held up. And when I finally got an offer it was so ridiculously low that I had to make it super clear that we were not going to take a penny less than our asking price, which is exactly what we got.

“If it was a penny less than our asking price I was perfectly fine for the player to wind his contract down.”

Spurs Web Opinion

Daniel Levy has shown that he likes operating late in the window as the club can get better deals. While this strategy might be frustrating for the fans, it has certainly helped the club save money over the years. With Sessegnon, going in late was probably the right approach as signing him early in the window wouldn’t have been beneficial since he would have missed preseason due to his injury anyway.

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