Athletic Bilbao director confirms interest in Fernando Llorente

Despite that invaluable hat trick against Tranmere Rovers in the FA Cup last weekend, Fernando Llorente’s tenure at Tottenham Hotspur is coming to an end at some point, whether it’s January or this summer when his contract expires. But for Spurs’ part, they’d like it to be in January so they can get his wages off the books now and may be get a small fee for him.

Llorente is on a list of players to offload along with Mousa Dembele (who is rumored to be close to a move to China), Georges-Kevin N’Koudou, Vincent Janssen, and Michel Vorm. Llorente in particular has said he’d like a return to his old club, Athletic Bilbao, and the feeling is apparently mutual. In an interview with Spanish radio station Cadena Sur (as reported by Sky Sports), Athletic Director of Football Rafa Alkorta confirmed that Llorente is on a list of players that the club is interested in bringing in this month.

“We are interested in Javi Martinez, Ibai Gomez, Ander Herrera, Fernando Llorente... all of them interest us.”

That doesn’t mean, of course, that they’ll actually follow through, but Fernando being a prodigal son at the end of his career probably is a factor, plus the fact that Athletic can probably purchase him for the price of a bacon sandwich and a jam roly-poly.

Llorente is on pretty high wages at the moment but his contract expires this summer. Since he’s not being used virtually at all in the league at the moment, it would make perfect sense for Spurs to offload him now and get even a small fee for him. Barring any further players coming in, his sale would mean that some combination of Son Heung-Min and Lucas Moura would serve as Harry Kane’s primary backup.

Interest ≠ action, but this would seem to be a positive step in that direction. We’ll keep tracking it.