Tottenham target Demarai Gray to hold transfer talks with Leicester

Maybe you’ve noticed that Tottenham Hotspur transfer news has been exceedingly quiet since the end of Spurs’ USA tour? Me too. While Mauricio Pochettino has said that Spurs will start to make some noise in the transfer market in the month of August, it’s been virtually silent since the first team returned from the International Champions Cup. It also means that some of the more... dubious transfer rumors are starting to come to the fore.

Like this one, for example. Sky Sports is reporting that Leicester City’s young, dynamic winger Demarai Gray is set to hold talks over his future with the Foxes. Gray is a super exciting young wide midfielder who can play on either flank and who Leicester snapped up in January of 2016 during their Premier League title season. While he made 30 appearances in the league last season they mostly came as an impact substitute with Craig Shakespeare preferring Marc Albrighton and Ahmed Musa on the left wing.

Gray’s apparently unhappy and wants a move to a different club, but with Riyad Mahrez also expected to leave this summer, Leciester may not be willing to let him go. According to the Leicester Mercury, Spurs are one of a host of clubs keeping an eye on Gray, including Bournemouth, Everton, and Borussia Dortmund, but there isn’t a strong indication that it goes beyond the “dubiously linked” status.

It would probably take a bid of about £20m to pry him away from Craig Shakespeare’s club, which isn’t bad for a young player who is an England U21 international, but I don’t think that Spurs are really all that interested in him at this time. He seems to check all the boxes of the kind of player Spurs should be tracking — young, can play multiple positions, high ceiling — but this rumor seems more like the “link Tottenham Hotspur to anyone” kind of story than something that might actually happen.

It’s not that Gray’s a bad player — he’s not — but it would be a completely underwhelming signing and it’s hard to think that if Gray’s complaining about not getting minutes at Leicester that he would improve his prospects at all by moving to Spurs where he’d probably be competing with Georges-Kevin N’Koudou and/or Moussa Sissoko for minutes.

It me, just waiting for actual news to drop. I’m bored.