Tottenham ‘willing to listen to offers’ for £26m flop – replacement lined up
According to reports, Tottenham Hotspur are ‘willing to listen to offers’ for Emerson Royal this summer.
The right-back made the move to Spurs last year. They paid a fee in the region of £26m to bring him in from Barcelona.
It was reported in January that Barcelona could not believe Tottenham splashed out as much as they did for Royal.
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The 23-year-old has played 33 times for Tottenham across all competitions this term. He has started their last two Premier League games on the bench.
Matt Doherty played ahead of Royal against Everton on Monday night. The former Wolves star shone as Spurs won 5-0.
The defender played in Harry Kane for both of his goals as Antonio Conte’s side closed in on the top four.
The Sun are reporting that Doherty now looks to be Conte’s ‘preferred choice’ at right-back.
They also state that Tottenham are ‘already willing to listen to offers’ for Royal amid his poor performances.
It was suggested earlier this week that Spurs are interested in Middlesbrough full-back Djed Spence.
He is being viewed as a replacement for Royal, but they face competition from the likes of Arsenal and Bayern Munich.
Elsewhere, Tottenham head coach Conte believes a top-four finish would be like a “Premier League title” for his side:
“In January, two players made us more complete. I think that we can fight. We can fight for this target,” Conte said.
“It’s important to have this ambition and it’s not right to hide our ambition and we’ll see what happens.
“We’ll try to do everything and at the end we’ll see what happens. Now we have only 12 games to play, not a trophy to play for. For this reason it’s right to take the responsibility, me, myself, I have to be the first.
“You know I don’t like to speak about ambition and reaching a place in the Champions League because I like to play to win the league and win trophies, but in this situation this could be our Champions League, our Premier League title if we are able to reach fourth place.”
Overall, it has been a disappointing campaign for the north Londoners. They were knocked out of the Carabao Cup in the semi-finals, the FA Cup in the fifth round and failed to make it out of their Europa Conference League group.
However, Conte says only having one competition to focus on will benefit his side in the final third of the season.
“It’s difficult to beat us when we have more days to prepare. The big problem is when we have games in a short period, when you don’t have more time to prepare the game.
“Now we have only one target, to finish in the best possible way. We have more time to prepare and we have to try to do our best and we’ll see at the end of the season.”
