Christian Eriksen may not have an exit strategy for this summer

The dust has settled on the English transfer window, meaning we can get back to actual football this weekend. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the news trickling in on the deals that didn’t happen.

Christian Eriksen falls into this category, and he’s probably not happy about it. After publicly saying he was looking for a new challenge that fell in line with his secret plan for his career, Eriksen may not have an option this summer to leave Tottenham Hotspur. Ben Hayward of the Evening Standard discussed the details.

Eriksen has one year left on his contract and Spurs are not prepared to let the Dane leave for free next summer, while the player favours a lifestyle choice and is keen on a move to Spain.

But Real Madrid are in the market for a more mobile midfielder after their troubles in pre-season, which has featured three defeats and 16 goals conceded.

Manchester United’s Paul Pogba remains their top target, but Ajax’s Donny van de Beek has overtaken Eriksen in the club’s list of priorities this summer, with the Dane all but ruled out at this stage.

It’s been pretty clear that Eriksen has googly eyes for Spain, specifically Real Madrid. He’s looking for his big payday and, truth be told, he’s earned it. Spurs have tried giving it to him with a big contract in the last year, but he’s opted to play the market and it’s backfiring.

Real Madrid have wanted Pogba all summer. Zidane has basically headbutted a wall for two months, trying to figure out how to pry the French midfielder away from the Red Devils. It doesn’t help his case that Florentino Perez doesn’t seem all that hot on the deal, given how much money they’ve already spent this summer.

Atletico Madrid have been sniffing around, but it seems they have another target in mind:

Atletico, meanwhile, are still hoping to sign playmaker James Rodriguez from Madrid for a fee of around €50million.

Real do not want to sell James to Atletico, but Los Blancos need to raise funds from somewhere in order to make another signing this summer and the player is keen to stay in Madrid.

There have been reports that Real don’t even have Eriksen as their Plan B. They would prefer Donny van de Beek from Ajax. He’d probably cost around the same price and is five years younger, but he’s not the same caliber as Eriksen, though he could get there at some point.

Eriksen may simply be out of options for an exit this summer, which leaves him with two choices: Play out his contract and leave on a free or sign a new deal with Tottenham Hotspur and stick around. The first option isn’t going to make Daniel Levy happy because the club will miss out on £50m-£60m in a potential transfer fee and, if the club is resigned to losing the Danish International, then selling him now makes the most sense.

It’s kind of crazy to think that this has happened to not just Eriksen, but to Toby Alderweireld in the same window. Both players are obviously one of the best at their positions in the world, yet nobody even looked their direction it seemed.

If Eriksen opts to stay and sign a new contract, Spurs will be absolutely loaded in attack. Even through all of this, there has not been a report of him being frozen out of the squad and played in the pre-season tour, even scoring a lovely goal against Bayern Munich in the Audi Cup final.

This can all change, of course. The European window doesn’t close until September 2, so there’s still just under a month for a deal to get done. This story is not going to go away, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

TL;DR: Read the f*cking article. (sorry not sorry)