Spurs to bid for the 'Skilled Giant'



Fiorentina and Tottenham seemed to be linked at the moment.

We had the UEFA Europa League tie where Roberto Soldado made a right mess of things when we were all over Fiorentina at the beginning of the tie at White Hart Lane. That miss, was it a miss given he bottled it and tried to pass, would have put a different complexion on the tie that saw us go out to the Italians.

Mohamad Salah has been a target of ours and he was at Fiorentina on loan from Chelsea last season, they have tried and thus far failed to sign him permanently and Chelsea won't sell him to us so he looks like ending up at another Italian club.

Atlético Madrid defensive midfielder Mario Suárez has been a target for both of us and Fiorentina look to have won the race to sign him if the reports in the Spanish press are anything to go by, the see it as a certain move.

Now there are reports emerging that suggest Spurs are preparing an offer for their 27-year-old (28 in January) left footed central attacking midfielder Josip Iličić. The suggestion from TMW is that we are preparing a £5.57 million  (US$8.69m - AUS$13.22m - €8m) offer. TMW take reports from elsewhere are aggregate them rather like Newsnow do, they also have editors for various clubs and this story comes from Antonio Gaito, their editorial director for Napoli who retells the story from one of the oldest Italian regional newspapers, La Nazione (The National). It's based in Florence with a circulation of 93,607.

The basis of their £5.57 million figure is pure conjecture, of course, Franco Baldini could have dropped a hint or an agent could 'leak' a figure. Clubs will often leak a low figure to the press if they want to reduce the value of a player in everyone's eyes, even suggesting another club are preparing such a bid. A lot of games are played with the press during a transfer window. Reducing expectation and reducing a fee doesn't always work but you never achieve anything unless you try.

Iličić has scored 31 goals, with 20 assists, 21 yellow cards and 1 red card in 144 Serie A games. In the UEFA Europa League he has 4 goals, 2 assists and 3 yellow cards in 15 games, with a further 4 goals and 1 assist in an additional 10 UEFA Europa League qualifying games. In the Coppa Italia he has 6 goals, 4 assists and 2 yellow cards.

The Slovenian international has played 9,765 Serie A minutes which equates to 108.5 games meaning his 31 goals from an attacking midfield position is impressive, a goal every 315 minutes and a hand in a goal every 191.47 minutes.

The video below is from his Palermo days but demonstrates a shooting ability, vision and skill. clearly there is something there, the question as ever is can it be translated to the Premier League. he looks rather Lamela build so how he would cope with greater physicality will have to be carfeully assessed.




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