Tottenham midfielder Wanyama fails to force Spurs exit
London, Tuesday
Harambee Stars and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Victor Wanyama will remain at the North London club after his deal to join Club Brugge collapsed on the final day of the transfer window on Monday.
There had been talk of the player returning to Belgium where he started his football career abroad, but Brugge are said to have had reservations over the Sh1.63 billion tag placed on Wanyama by Tottenham.
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According to the Daily Mail newspaper, four other clubs Celtic, Monaco, Valencia and Bologna had also shown interest in the Kenyan captain but they will now have to wait until the January transfer window to revive their interests.
In the meantime, Wanyama who has fallen in the pecking order at Tottenham, behind Harry Winks, Eric Dier, Moussa Sissoko, Dele Alli, Tanguy Ndombele and Christian Eriksen, will have to try and fight his way back to the starting line-up as he waits for offers in January.
Meanwhile, Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues combined to spend a record Sh625 billion (£5 billion) on players this summer despite Premier League clubs, usually the continent’s most active shoppers, reining their spending in slightly, Deloitte has revealed.
According to analysis from the professional services company’s Sports Business Group, Spanish clubs spent £1.24 billion, breaking the 1bn-euros mark for the first time and more than doubling their expenditure from just two years ago. But there were also summer spending records set in Italy (£1.06 billion), Germany (£670 million) and France (£605 million).
Premier League clubs still led the way, though, with a total spend of £1.41 billion, although the net spend was only £575 million, the lowest since 2015.
That net-spend figure also fell by £50 million since the league shut its transfer window on August 8, more than three weeks earlier than many of its European peers, with the likes of Matteo Darmian, Javier Hernandez and Ryan Kent all leaving England’s top flight in recent days.
The decision to close the Premier League summer transfer window early is now under review, with a growing number of clubs believing the experiment to align it with the start of the season has not worked because the other big leagues have not followed suit, giving them an advantage in the market.
Kent, of course, only crossed the border into Scotland, swapping Liverpool for Rangers on a permanent basis after last season’s successful loan spell.
And Scottish Premiership clubs, almost entirely driven by Celtic and Rangers, combined to spend about £25 million this summer. -Agencies
