Castles: Spurs offered “cash plus players” to Soton for Hojbjerg

Tottenham Hotspur probably aren’t going to make a huge splash in the transfer window this summer, but one player they’ve been credibly — and consistently — linked to is (now former) Southampton captain Pierre-Emilie Hjobjerg.

The Danish international has refused to sign a contract extension at Southampton and his deal expires next summer. That plus his captaincy being stripped away by Soton manager Ralph Hassenhuttl is a strong indication that he’s leaving St. Mary’s in the near future.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of news on this front lately, but journalist Duncan Castles dropped one tasty tidbit on The Transfer Window podcast over the weekend, suggesting that Spurs have put in a “cash plus players” offer for him, and that other clubs are interested but are lowballing.

“Southampton see him as a player they have to sell in this market. They, I’m told, have three offers so far for the player, none of them are satisfactory, one extremely low at a financial level, and they have an offer of cash plus players in exchange, which I understand has come from Tottenham Hotspur.

“My information is that Jose Mourinho likes Hojbjerg and he sees him as a player obviously with substantial Premier League experience who he can bring into the centre of his midfield, can play a couple of positions in midfield at a relatively low cost, and solves some of the problems he sees in that squad,”

So firstly, yes we can absolutely believe that Spurs are trying to do a cash plus player deal for Hojbjerg, especially in this post-COVID financial environment. But the interesting part is that it’s cash plus PLAYERS — plural. A safe guess that one of the players offered is Kyle Walker-Peters, who is currently on loan at St. Mary’s through the end of the season. The other player(s) is anyone’s guess — perhaps someone like Cameron Carter-Vickers, who is almost certainly leaving Spurs at some point, or maybe another, different academy graduate on the fringes of the Spurs squad but who is unlikely to crack the first team?

Who knows. But it’s interesting that we’re trying to sweeten the deal by offloading more than one piece of dead wood. Hojbjerg would be a pretty solid (if not slam-dunk spectacular) addition to Spurs’ midfield corps, and if they can get it over the line by offloading a few players in the process, so much the better.