Wolves reject Tottenham’s £15m bid for Adama Traore

The scuttlebutt among Tottenham transfer sources over the past few days was that things were starting to heat up in Spurs’ pursuit of Adama Traore. Negotiations have apparently been going on for a while, but things had been a mite quiet through last week.

Now, the BBC (and others) are reporting that Spurs have lodged a £15m bid for Traore... and Wolves have rejected it.

I can hear the impassioned wails of heartsick and forlorn Spurs fans shouting “FFS LEVY” into the void, but in all honesty, I view this as a pretty good sign (assuming you’re a person who actually wants Spurs to buy Adama this month). Past reports suggested Wolves needed to sell before they could buy this month, and were willing to entertain offers of around £20m for Adama, who scored his first goal of the season for Wolves last week. Meanwhile, Sky Sports is saying there’s a £10m gap in their valuations.

£15m is clearly < £25m, so we should probably view this as an opening bid, and the first step in what is a negotiation that will probably result in Traore squeezing into a super-tight Spurs kit before the end of the month.

Wolves paid £18m to buy Adama from Middlesbrough, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the bare minimum they’d accept, as they’d probably like to not lose money on him. That’s fine. Or maybe we could include one gently used and rehabilitated Matt Doherty into the deal as well. What, that? Naw, that buffs right out. Good as new!

Anyway, I think this gets done, eventually.