There isn\u2019t a whole lot of info here, just a two sentence report citing sources \u201cclose to Tonali\u2019s management team,\u201d followed by 600 words of context padding.<\/p>\n
Manchester City have joined the battle to sign Sandro Tonali with Enzo Maresca eager to hit the ground running as new boss.<\/p>\n
The FA Cup and Carabao Cup winners have retained an interest in the Toon midfielder, with sources close to Tonali\u2019s management team describing Man City as genuine candidates to lure him from Tyneside. Spurs had an \u00a380million bid rejected by Newcastle this month with the Magpies wanting a fee closer to \u00a3100m for his services.<\/p>\n
Notably there isn\u2019t anything specific in here — how much City are willing to bid, whether Newcastle would be more amenable to a City approach for Tonali, etc. It\u2019s light on details but does mention a source very well connected to Tonali. It also suggests City are not done with their summer spending despite spending a nine figure amount on Anderson last week. It also suggests the possibility that Tonali\u2019s interest in leaving Newcastle for Spurs is softer than a down pillow, and that he\u2019d rather go to a mega-rich club like City than the club that finished 17th twice in two seasons.<\/p>\n
This could be a number of things. It could be factual if taken at face value, signaling that Spurs might be forced to pivot to different targets. It might be Newcastle signalling that Spurs need to get off their asses and make a respectable bid for Tonali so they can close the deal, and using potential interest from City as a stalking horse. It could be completely fake. We don\u2019t know, and there\u2019s not enough info to make a firm conclusion.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, I think Tonali would probably prefer to go to City than to Spurs, if the club puts a good bid in that\u2019s a little closer to Newcastle\u2019s \u00a3100m valuation of the player. That\u2019s more or less Occam\u2019s Razor at work — it takes a rare top level player to prefer to move to the rebuilding team than the one that challenges for Premier League titles every season. And I could be very wrong here! But I am starting to think that the combination of big clubs vying for Tonali\u2019s signature and the player hoping to cash in for a big summer move at a different club will probably result in Spurs missing out. As I\u2019ve said before, I\u2019m actually okay with that option, as there are better fits for Spurs\u2019 needs in the midfield market that would cost that price or less. But it would be a pretty significant blow for Tottenham\u2019s hopes for a \u201cbig swing\u201d in the midfield market this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There isn\u2019t a whole lot of info here, just a two sentence report citing sources \u201cclose to Tonali\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,52146,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-666389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-tottenham-transfer-news-rumors","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}