Tottenham Hotspur are making a serious push for Adrien Rabiot

Well, you can’t accuse Tottenham Hotspur of not swinging for the fences. There are new reports coming out of France that suggest Spurs are making a concerted push to sign wantaway PSG midfielder Adrien Rabiot before the January transfer window slams shut next Thursday.

First, Spanish daily Mundo Deportivo is reporting that Barcelona has backed off of their interest in Rabiot after completing the signing of Frenkie De Jong from Ajax last week, with the deal to bring Rabiot to Spain for free this summer still unsigned. That has left an opening for Tottenham, and PSG blog Paris United is claiming that Spurs are making a serious bid for his services.

Spurs have reportedly made an offer to purchase Rabiot from PSG, and are offering him €7.5m/year in wages plus a €5m signing bonus to come to Tottenham. Paris United calls it a “wage-structure shattering” offer, but that’s not exactly true — under current conversion, €7.5m/year is about £125k/week, well withing Spurs’ new wage structure that has Harry Kane at the top at £200k/week. If you factor in the €5m signing fee, and it’s more like a front-loaded £150k/week. That’s not only in Spurs’ structure, it’s pretty reasonable for a player of Rabiot’s caliber.

However, there’s a catch — Rabiot is apparently still not convinced that a move to Spurs is in his best interest. Paris United states that he likes London and would be keen to rejoin his former teammates Lucas Moura and Serge Aurier, but would rather (ugh) join Liverpool if he were to come to the Premier League. The good news there is that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence right now that Liverpool are interested in him.

Paris United is a blog, but a pretty well-sourced one. They were one of the first to report on the connections between Rabiot and Barcelona early on, and were on the forefront of the Lucas Moura and Serge Aurier to Spurs transfers. This, combined with past reports about Mauricio Pochettino’s dogged determination to convince Rabiot to come, makes me inclined to think there’s some truth here.

This is pretty exciting, but it’s hardly a done deal. Rabiot will probably only end up at Spurs if he can be convinced that moving to north London is his best option, and there’s still a lot of time left in the window. We can be encouraged by the specificity of the reporting, and the fact that it suggests that Tottenham are clearly trying to make this happen.

I don’t know about you, but I would suddenly start to feel a whole lot better about this season if this transfer actually happens.