There is almost certainly going to be a significant exodus from Tottenham Hotspur this summer with no European football next season, and the first person to leave is Arnaut Danjuma. Dan Kilpatrick writes in the Evening Standard that Spurs are opting not to exercise their £27m purchase option on the Dutch winger and he is set to return to his parent club Villarreal.
Earlier this week, Danjuma penned a farewell message to fans on Instagram that, in his interesting style, was almost philosophical in nature (“What is tomorrow worth, if it is the same as today?”), but in which he admitted that his return to the Premier League was “indifferent.”
“Indifferent” is a pretty apt way to describe his entire loan, to be honest. I don’t feel like we ever got a chance to see what Danjuma could add to Tottenham because he played under three different head coaches during his short Spurs tenure — Antonio Conte, Cristian Stellini, & Ryan Mason — and not one of them looked to him for significant minutes.
Maybe that should tell us something, but Danjuma leaves the club with more questions than answers. He showed glimpses of ability in the times he did play, but it never seemed to be enough to make him a regular contributor. He only made one start for the club, and otherwise never played more than 32 minutes in any one appearance. That said, he scored two goals for Spurs to go along with six more in the opening half of the season at Villarreal. I don’t know if he was better than any of Spurs’ other attacking midfield options, but I feel as though he never really got much of a chance.
But it doesn’t matter. Tottenham have already decided that he’s not what they were looking for and he returns to a club that doesn’t seem to want him there either. I wonder where he’ll go next, but I hope he lands at a place where he can be a solid contributor, because there are definitely skills there that would be useful for a club.
