“‘What’s wrong?’ I yelled. ‘We can’t stop here. This is bat country!'”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Welcome back to Dispatches from Bat Country. We’re now in May, and Bat Country continues to expand, much like a fart fills an elevator. My list now has sixty names on it since January, and I have one thing to say:
You gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers in this racket.
Wrong movie, I know.
Here we cover all those rumors on which we normally wouldn’t report. The fringe cases. The names that spring up from untold lands, off the beaten path. We’ll discuss mostly incomings and try and focus on names we haven’t already talked about elsewhere on the site. Each name will be accompanied by a Guano Meter: a ranking out of 5 that instead of rating how likely we think it is to happen, it instead is the complete opposite. For example, a Guano Meter of 5/5 would be something like… a Tottenham player winning a penalty again this season.
Check out some of the previous editions here, as well as Nathan Bartel’s excellent piece that was the genesis of this series here.
Crysencio Summerville
- Weirdly enough, the second Leeds player we’ve been linked with (after Archie Gray) – maybe we’ve been scouting their matches and the journos don’t know who we’re looking at? This time we’re looking winger
- Or, ya know – maybe we’re just keeping tabs on our loanee Joe Rodon
- Seriously though, that name. It’s awesome. Does he run crime syndicates in Gotham City or something?
- Summerville has 17 goals and 8 assist this season, pretty solid numbers
- As to the journos I mentioned above, well, about that…
- These links come from Here in the City. You know, that site where pretty much anyone can write anything. Much like this one, really
- And if you peek under the lid, a lot of this sounds like agent talk. He’s linked with Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Brighton, Villa… the list goes on – so it sounds like he’s sounding out the market, not heading to Spurs
Guano Meter: 5/5 – I never thought I’d say this, but Here in the City is one step down from The Sun. At least they have 1 or 2 actual journalists.
Pablo Torre
- Barcelona attacking midfielder, currently on loan at Girona
- He’s young, only 18, and getting a decent number of sub minutes in La Liga
- He plays mostly behind the striker, and has a decent passing range (that you’d expect of any Barca product)
- Probably needs to flesh out the rest of his game, but he’s young so has plenty of room to grow
- The background on this link is a report from E-Noticias saying Spurs submitted a €30 million offer for the youngster. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of E-Noticias; apparently they’re a newspaper?
- I can’t find anything else about this link anywhere – apart from a few reports from the Barca side saying they would consider offers. You know, because they’re broke, and there’s only so much spare change between the couch cushions
Guano Meter: 5/5 – There’s just nothing there to support the original report; I doubt this is a thing.
Bilal El Khannouss
- We now head to Belgium, where we find a man with a name that sounds like it would fit right in on Krypton; have the journos and ITK merchants been reading too many comic books?
- Yet another attacking midfielder, the Belgian / Moroccan spends most of his time in the front three of Genk’s 3-4-3, playing just in behind the striker
- Another passy option (which we need), good on the ball, but with a bit more output than Torre above; though in arguably a weaker league
- According to the reports, we’ve been looking at the 19-year-old since the end of last year, and there’s been a couple of different outlets (none super reliable) that have linked him to us
- None of the sources are that great, but one at least is Belgian, Voetbalkrant
- They say we are “planning a bid”. Ah, that old chestnut; however, they do mention we’ve been regularly scouting him at matches which seems a weird detail to just… make up
Guano Meter: 4/5 – We’re really not on a roll this time around, are we? Another that feels unlikely.
Connor Gallagher
- Come on, you all know who he is
- In case you needed a reminder, he good, y’all:
- Really grown this last season or so, adding passing, intelligent movement, and getting much more involved in a pretty poor Chelsea side – he’d go straight into the Spurs starting lineup as a starting 8
- In case you weren’t aware of his situation, Chelsea are over a barrel due to FFP limitations, and need to sell club-trained players as they count as pure profit; there’s only a handful of these they have, and Gallagher is one – and he hasn’t renewed his contract
- That makes him gettable, and Spurs are reportedly in pole position to sign him if he does indeed leave Chelsea
- Countless outlets are reporting this: The Telegraph, Evening Standard, Alasdair Gold, etc. This is real
Guano Meter: 2/5 – We’re clearly interested, but there’s a lot of moving parts here; and Spurs may decide he’s a bit of a luxury with other priorities needing to be addressed.
Kyle Walker-Peters
- Ah, KWP. A fullback originally coming through the youth program at Spurs, he’s now at Southampton in the Championship, looking forward to the upcoming promotion play-offs
- This would mean a second Spurs stint for our second Kyle Walker!
- It seems Spurs are concerned about their club-trained numbers, and they’re also in search of a more… fit-for-purpose backup for Pedro Porro than Emerson Royal; KWP would potentially address both
- He’d probably be very gettable if Southampton fail to be promoted
- I feel like he’d thrive in the inverted fullback role; but Spurs also already have an issue with winning the ball in the air, and KWP is a nightmare for addressing that. Are you wanting to make your set-piece defense worse???
- His contract is also starting to run down…
- There’s no real link here, though. This one comes courtesy of ITK, so is probably just made up, though the titans of football journalism GiveMeSport did do a piece on it – which really adds credence (that’s called sarcasm, folks)
Guano Meter: 4/5 – One that kind of makes sense, which makes you trust the (unreliable) outlets reporting it even less. They’re playing checkers; hopefully the club is playing chess.
Tosin Adarabioyo
- Hey, another center back we’ve been linked to for a while. We ARE just playing the hits again!
- Adarabioyo is at Fulham, and is running down his contract, and is homegrown; Spurs like homegrown players, and they like free players even more
- I’m not sure exactly how good he is, however – Fulham’s defense hasn’t exactly been great and he’s not brilliant on the ball
- What he is though is pretty athletic, and VERY good in the air – he’s both a threat on attacking set pieces and a deterrent when defending them. That’s something Tottenham desperately need
- This is another link that goes back a while, that various outlets have reported on
- There has been some recent movement with this rumor, however, in that Adarabioyo has rejected Spurs; this comes from Paul O’Keefe, who does seem to have some agent ties – though we don’t like to use him as a primary source
- There’s also been some reporting that he’s chosen Newcastle; so perhaps he’s maybe one to scratch from the list now?
Guano Meter: 3/5 – This is undoubtedly a real link; but it seems like it’s becoming less and less likely he comes to Tottenham
That’s it for this installment. I will have another next week to satisfy your appetite for transfer chowder. Welcome to Bat Country.