Confidence apparently growing that Spurs will get Ndombele, but let’s pump the brakes

This morning in the Hoddle of Coffee, I talked about how we break down things we see on Twitter and articles. The discussion that centers around these rumors that seem flimsy at best isn’t heated, and today we had one of those conversations around another rumor for Tanguy Ndombele.

On a day where a tweet showing Ndombele dressed in Spurs gear was debunked in under two minutes’ time, Alasdair Gold has dropped a little nugget on Twitter regarding the possible transfer of the French International to Tottenham Hotspur:

The tweet is one of those eye-grabbing pieces that leads to a whole lot of speculation. Here’s the article in question, along with the leading paragraphs:

There is growing confidence that Tottenham Hotspur’s pursuit of Lyon midfielder Tanguy Ndombele will end successfully with a club record deal.

Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino asked that the 22-year-old was the club’s number one target this summer and while the Argentine rests up with his family on the island of Formentera in the Mediterranean Sea after a tough season, his chairman Daniel Levy has been negotiating with the French club trying to land his man.

Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas said on Tuesday that no bid had yet met his expectations for Ndombele and while there are still plenty of talks to be had, football.london understands that there is a growing confidence from all parties that a deal will be struck for the central midfielder.

This is a whole lot of nothing. It’s basically a reminder that clubs are on vacation and players are on international duty while the chairmen of clubs negotiate. The rest of the article is basically a recap of what’s happened up to this point, including Ndombele’s quote regarding Tottenham being a big club and Aulas openly saying nobody has hit his valuation yet.

So why is this news? Simple: Gold has sources in the club. This reeks of getting leaked information to get something in the news to remind Aulas that nobody else is sniffing around for the time being and Spurs definitely want Ndombele. It’s all part of the running saga, but let’s take it further and explain why we aren’t ruling this out as bat country.

The dominoes are falling in place for Spurs to get at least one of Giovani Lo Celso or Ndombele. We’ll avoid the similarities and differences between the players for now, but in a window where midfielders are definitely a big talk, there have been some important moves for the clubs that would want either player.

Manchester City look set to buy Atletico Madrid midfielder Rodri, which takes the Cityzens out of this running. Juventus look like they’re going to buy Adrien Rabiot and deal with his probably-psychotic mother. Real Madrid have bigger fish to fry in the market and have already spent the amount in Scrooge McDuck’s money pit on transfers in. Chelsea can’t buy anyone. Nobody really wants to go to Arsenal. Manchester United have Ed Woodward, who doesn’t understand how proper transfers work. The only one I’d be remotely worried about is Paris Saint-Germain, but they look less than interested even with Aulas holding up a gigantic neon sign saying “SAVE ME PSG! YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE!”

We want to be excited about this, and we are still chomping at the bit to get a signing of this caliber to the club. Gold saying there’s growing confidence is good enough to get your hopes up, but any suggestion that this deal is close is probably where bat country chimes in. Levy wants to get Ndombele for less than the fee quoted by Aulas and seems content to sweat it out a bit, so long as nobody else gets involved.

Silly Season in a nutshell, everyone.