Ajax expected to return with improved bid for Steven Bergwijn

If reports are to be believed (and in this case I suspect they are), Ajax have already had one bid rejected for Tottenham Hotspur winger Steven Bergwijn this month. The former PSV man, purchased in January 2020 just before the first COVID wave, has fallen out of Antonio Conte’s plans, or at least far enough away that the club is willing to listen to offers, and Ajax is the club most closely linked with a move to bring him back to the Netherlands.

According to Dan Kilpatrick in the Evening Standard, Ajax had a £15m bid for Stevie rebuffed earlier in the January window, but is expected to come back with an improved bid this month. Spurs are supposedly interested, but want something a lot closer to the £27m they paid for him two years ago. Talks are continuing.

The other bit of info from Kilpatrick is that Spurs want to have their replacement already in hand before they sanction Bergwijn’s departure. That means that this is a potential transfer that isn’t likely to happen until closer to the end of the window, unless Spurs are able to land one of their preferred attacking targets first. Thing is, we have no idea who that person is yet, so I expect this will take a while.

As I said before, I like Stevie and think he has been pretty decent rotation despite never really hitting the ground running at Spurs. That said, I think he’d be FANTASTIC at a club like Ajax that has the infrastructure in place to allow him to succeed, and a tactical setup that’s really better suited to his strengths.

There’s obviously no guarantees in the January transfer window, but this really feels like a transfer that’s going to happen. If Spurs can somehow upgrade Stevie with, say, a decent Kane backup or a utility attacking player that can quickly adapt to Conte’s tactics, that feels like a pretty good outcome.