Daniel Levy has seemingly sent a message to Harry Kane that his desire to leave the club may not be achievable, saying he will only do what is ‘right for the club’.
Despite being one of the Premier League’s most ruthless marksmen – his 23 goals this season seeing him collect his third golden boot – Kane is yet to collect major silverware with Spurs, prompting the striker to inform the club of his desire to leave this summer.
His bid to end his long association with the north London club has spiked interest from across the Premier League and beyond, with Man City, Man Utd and Chelsea all strongly linked.
However, with the effects of the pandemic still raging, and Kane still having three years left to run on his deal at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, prising him out of Daniel Levy’s clutches looks like being a potentially expensive and difficult task.
Spurs have named Fabio Paratici as their new Director of Football, and speaking after his appointment, Levy said he shared Kane’s ‘frustrations’, but insisted he will only ever do what is ‘right for the club’, reports suggesting the famously tough negotiator will demand around £150 million for the 27-year-old.
“I am never going to talk about any specific player in public,” Levy told the club’s official website. “All I will say is his frustrations in not winning are shared by me and all the fans and players. We all want to win.
“One of the items that Fabio will have to deal with when he comes in is which players are going to be retained, which will be asked to look for other clubs. There is a market out there. What we want and what other clubs want is not always possible to achieve. We will do whatever is right for the club.”
Levy went on to point out the dire state of the clubs finances following the pandemic which took hold less than a year after the opening of their £1 billion stadium.
“We have to be realistic where we are,” Levy said. “We are still in a pandemic, the consequences for this club have been more severe than any other club in the Premier League, over £200m of lost revenue. Revenue we cannot recover.
“The timing of our new stadium could not have been worse. We have the most expensive stadium in Europe, the highest level of debt of any club in Europe. Fortunately for us, it is long term and we are in a good financial position in that sense. We have not been getting the revenues we had hoped for from our stadium and as a consequence we have to be careful over the coming years and be prudent.
“Our duty is to protect the club even though we want to win. We will spend but we are a self-sustaining club, we have to be sensible. Sometimes the fans think we should be spending but there have been circumstances when the coach hasn’t wanted to spend on a player. We will make investments in the squad.”
The Spurs chairman has come in for plenty of criticism following the European Super League debacle and has been accused of not caring for the club, claims he was swift to refute: “Are we satisfied with where we are today? Absolutely not. We need to turn it around but we need to make sure this club is in a sound financial position in the years ahead. We need success on the pitch now – my view is we have unfinished business.”
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