Man City, Liverpool and Man Utd stars among 10 possible James Maddison replacements for Spurs
With Spurs confirming the worst about James Maddison’s ACL injury and Thomas Frank offering a gloomy update on the fitness of Dejan Kulusevski after a 4-0 pre-season friendly defeat to Bayern Munich, it looks certain they will have to go back into the transfer market to do something about their moribund attacking options.
Even the seemingly perfect – if emotional – end to Son Heung-min’s Tottenham career looks slightly different in the light of Maddison’s serious injury. The mischievous among you might well ask whether Spurs would even still have sanctioned his exit had the cat not been so entirely out of the bag before that game against Newcastle in Seoul.
That’s a hypothetical, though, and what Spurs need is something real. Worth remembering they were pretty keen on signing Morgan Gibbs-White even before this Maddison setback. That ended… badly for Spurs. They could really do with at least one of these ending rather better over the next week or so.
Nico Paz (Como)
There are conflicting reports about the seriousness and even existence of Spurs’ interest in the Como playmaker, but there would be something amiss if the 20-year-old wasn’t at least on their radar even before the last week’s unpleasantness.
He would appear to have all the necessary tools for Spurs’ needs, but it’s a deeply difficult deal to do at a price Spurs are going to like with his former club Real Madrid entitled to 50 per cent of any fee and in keen and observant possession of a buy-back clause.
Harvey Elliott (Liverpool)
Perhaps not the most exciting of the options within the Premier League but in some ways the most interesting. After the way Elliott starred for England U21s this summer we really are incredibly keen to see what he can do given a full season of proper first-choice, first-team responsibility and there’s a compelling case that Spurs would now be the most fascinating place for that to happen.
There really isn’t another club right now that can offer the same mix of opportunity and big stage for Elliott to prove he can take his age-group dominance into senior football.
There’s nothing wrong with being happy as a vital and useful squad member at this excellent Liverpool side, but it does feel like he could be so much more somewhere else.
Jack Grealish (Man City)
It seems like he’s going to be a key figure in the final weeks of the transfer window. It’s felt like everyone’s been playing a waiting game with Grealish this summer. We all know he’s going to leave City; the question is when and where to.
We get the sense that he’s not yet ready to commit to the kind of teams that might have him at the top of their shopping list, and the teams he might be ready to commit to haven’t yet worked down their list of targets far enough to reach him.
But the time where this game of chicken ends feels closer than ever after that Maddison injury. Even if it doesn’t kick Spurs into desperate action to find out whether the Aston Villa playmaker version of Grealish is still there lurking within the Guardiola automaton, it will surely make other interested parties get a wriggle on.
We’re really not sure we want to see this one, purely because it would mean finding a new player to take second place on our list of the most Spurs player never to actually play for Spurs. Top spot is and always will be, of course, Stewart Downing’s.
Ebere Eze (Crystal Palace)
Tottenham’s interest here is long-standing but Arsenal appear to have stolen a march on their local rivals this summer. But that deal remains undone and the chance for Spurs to make another move of their own is still there.
Can they offer what Arsenal can? They cannot, but that cuts both ways. They can certainly offer him an easier route to unquestioned first-choice selection for 50-odd games in a World Cup year, for instance.
As ever when talking about potential departures from Palace this summer, though, it is worth noting that they themselves are neither desperate nor particularly keen to sell any of their FA Cup-winning stars at this time. This will not be a cheap option.
Xavi Simons (RB Leipzig)
Another high-class option where the interest is long-standing but the attentions of a London rival may render it moot. Chelsea have appeared Simons’ likeliest destination for most of the summer, and again the only real card Spurs have to play is in offering fewer existing players standing in his way.
And that feels like it’s got more chance of counting for something with Eze than it does Simons. And we’re not sure it’s got that much chance with Eze.
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Morgan Rogers (Aston Villa)
Rogers’ name popped up briefly in connection with Spurs earlier in the summer and there’s a good chance the boat has been missed here, with any deal far more likely before the PSR deadline than after it.
He also limped out of Villa’s 4-0 friendly win over Roma on Wednesday night, raising doubts about his participation in the early weeks of the season. Something that might, counter-intuitively, not be the worst news for Villa in the long-term.
They remain keen to tie him down to a new contract but are surely primed to expect at least a phone call from London. One that very likely also mentions the words ‘Jacob’ and ‘Ramsey’.
Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United)
Reality bit for Mainoo in a difficult 24/25 season and there remain doubts about where he best fits into Ruben Amorim’s system at Manchester United. Is he physical enough for a role in the midfield double-pivot? Is he creative enough to be one of the two number 10s?
After a summer full of talk suggesting he could be on the move, the tone has shifted. It now appears more likely he’ll remain at Old Trafford for now, but with United continuing to chuck all sorts of money at all sorts of players it does still feel like some will need recouping somewhere along the way; Mainoo could yet emerge as something of a spare part.
Whether he’s exactly the sort of player Spurs need to take on such a significant creative burden in what currently looks like a team of honest plodders is less certain, but he does possess that Maddison-like ability to unlock a defence with a clever pass others might spot.
Mikkel Damsgaard (Brentford)
Look, at some point in this kind of list it is an absolute and irrefutable law that you must pose the question “Who has done this job for the manager elsewhere?”
Damsgaard might not have got the same attention as your Bryan Mbeumos or Yoane Wissas at Brentford last season, but he was a key figure in their attacking efforts and reached double figures for assists.
Frank obviously knows all about a player who started 34 Premier League games for the Bees last season – and came off the bench in all the other four – and he wouldn’t command the price tag of many others on this list. At 25, he’s also a potential long-term rather than stop-gap solution.
But he has five years left on his contract and Brentford’s interest in losing another key figure this summer – and this late on – would, we suggest, be fairly low.
Lucas Paqueta (West Ham)
The very idea of Spurs signing anyone from West Ham was a ludicrous one until as recently as this very summer, and we’ll cheerfully concede that when the first talk of Mohammed Kudus joining Tottenham emerged in June we immediately dismissed the idea and assumed the Hammers and/or Kudus’ camp were simply trying to smoke out interest from elsewhere.
But no. With West Ham no longer quite sure about Kudus after a Difficult Second Season, Spurs came up with a sum of money sufficient to overcome the Hammers’ intrinsic unwillingness to do business with the north London mob.
With Paqueta now free to resume his career after being cleared of spot-fixing charges that looked set to land him a lifetime ban, talk has instantly resumed about whether that career will indeed continue at West Ham.
He had been poised to join Man City before it all kicked off, and they have been mentioned again. In a move that could take out two of the 10 options here in one swoop, there has been talk of City using Grealish as a makeweight in that deal. And you have to concede that Grealish at West Ham feels, if anything, even more correct than Grealish at Tottenham. Although that could just be the colour scheme.
Mason Mount (Manchester United)
Has been one of Manchester United’s best players in pre-season, which is admittedly a little bit like saying the bread has been one of the most appealing elements of a dogsh*t sandwich, but still.
It may be that he’s done enough to convince Amorim he can turn around his MAN UNITED NIGHTMARE rather than needing the seemingly inevitable ESCAPE ROUTE from it, but we do still find ourselves wondering where exactly a player whose career has shambled down a cul-de-sac fits in at United.
Whether anyone looking to resurrect a career gone backwards would be wise or keen to attempt that challenge at this iteration of Tottenham is another valid consideration.
