Tottenham Hotspur’s expected bid for Leicester City’s James Maddison is proceeding about how you’d expect. Yesterday, news emerged that Spurs were considering lodging a bid of £40m plus add-ons for the 26 year old England international. Today, Fabrizio Romano has reported that Spurs have come to a full agreeement with the player on personal terms, while Charlie Eccleshire writes in The Athletic that all parties are hopeful that a deal can be reached sometime this week.
Tottenham have agreed personal terms with James Maddison as negotiations with Leicester are finally advancing — talks are underway. ⚪️ #THFC
Understand Spurs chairman Daniel Levy is very active on this deal, trying to get it done as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/f2o0BL1VCR
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) June 27, 2023
The urgency here is interesting. Daniel Levy is usually one who is more than willing to wait out a transfer in order to gain more leverage, and as I’ve suggested earlier, this is definitely a deal where waiting could be financially prudent. Maddison doesn’t want to play in the Championship, and the threat of potentially doing so is likely enough to add a little extra pressure to Leicester to cut a deal.
So you have to wonder whether moving up the timetable here is about prudence rather than finance. That prudence could come in a couple of different rationales, though — does Ange Postecoglou, who apparently desires Maddison, want him in for the start of preseason? Does it have something to do with Bayern angling for Harry Kane? We don’t know! But it’s interesting and definitely not part of Levy’s pattern.
There’s a lot of news indicating that Spurs are on a glide path on a number of different fronts with a number of different players. More to come, obviously, but stuff does seem to be happening.
