A leading football agent has reportedly told Football Insider that Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has lost his “midas touch” in the transfer market.
Levy has built up a reputation of being one of the shrewdest negotiators in football over to the way he has conducted his transfer business at Spurs.
He has ensured that the club have been able to make big profits on the players they move on while hardly wasting money on deals that do not represent good value for money.
However, more recently Tottenham have had problems shifting out the players that are deemed surplus to requirements, and the agent has suggested that it is the Spurs chairman that is to blame for it.
The unnamed agent, who is said to have been involved in multiple Spurs moves in recent times, told Football Insider: “Take the Christian Eriksen and Victor Wanyama deals, Tottenham lost out big time.
“Levy was asking for £130-£140million for Eriksen at the end of last season, when he had a year left on his contract. It was pie-in-the-sky stuff.
“They refused to cut the price until later in the window, by which time they realised he was not quite as in demand as they hoped.
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“In the end, they had a disinterested player who went through the motions before they had no choice but to sell him in January? For, what? £16million. That’s nothing. They could and should have got £70-80million for him last summer, when he wanted to go.
“Wanyama, they were asking for something like £10million for him in January. Too much for a player who has serious knee problems.
“Teams thought he was too much of a risk at that price. Now, they’ve let him go for nothing to the MLS just to get him off the wage bill.”
While the agent credit Levy for what he has achieved in the past, he insisted that some of the club’s recent transfer dealings have been worrying.
He added: “Daniel Levy rightfully has a reputation for getting top dollar for his assets. Kevin Wimmer, Nabil Bentaleb, Nacer Chadli, Tom Carroll, all these fringe players were sold for big money and healthy profits.
“Even the Kyle Walker deal was good business, despite what’s he gone on to achieve at Man City.
“That hasn’t been the case recently. Levy’s lost his midas touch. Is he getting too greedy? Has he taken his eye off the ball with the stadium?
“You look at the [Kieran] Trippier deal. What was it, £20m? That’s nothing for an England international at his peak age.
“[Vincent] Janssen was sold at a huge loss when they should have let him go a year or two earlier.
“The Danny Rose situation doesn’t appear to have been handled too well, either. He’s another one they could end up getting nothing for.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Some of our transfer decisions in the past few years have been extremely out of character for someone like Levy considering the way he likes to do his business. I just couldn’t understand why the likes of Rose and Wanyama weren’t moved on a year or so ago. I suspect Pochettino probably add something to do with the decisions.
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