Tottenham Hotspur warned about risk of Morgan Gibbs-White transfer hijack
Football finance expert Stefan Borson has explained why Tottenham Hotspur face a major risk of missing out on Morgan Gibbs-White if they fail to pay more than the attacking midfielder’s release clause.
Reports indicate that Daniel Levy and Tottenham expect the Morgan Gibbs-White deal to go through as they are of the opinion that their triggering of the £60m release clause was legitimate.
However, some Spurs fans are concerned that Gibbs-White featured in Forest’s first pre-season clash of the summer against Monaco on Saturday, as they fear that it means that the case is not close to being resolved at the moment.
The next 24 hours are expected to be crucial in the Gibbs-White saga, with the midfielder wanting his move to N17 to be completed before Forest fly to Portugal tomorrow for their pre-season camp.
Tottenham may be forced to pay more than £60m for Morgan Gibbs-White
Stefan Borson has now suggested that Spurs would have to re-enter negotiations with Forest and would end up paying more than £60m to get the deal over the line.
He explained that if Tottenham decide to delay the move, another club could simply activate the £60m clause as they would be within their rights to do so since the clause is no longer confidential, having been leaked to the media.
Borson told Football Insider: “The end result is that to get this deal done, Tottenham are probably gonna have to negotiate with Nottingham Forest a fee that includes not just the £60m release clause, but a little extra to effectively buy themselves out of the dispute, or walk away.
“Now, we’ve seen in the past that other teams have walked away. Of course, we know Liverpool walked away from Van Dijk and came back in January.
I wonder, though, in this scenario, whether Spurs would be as relaxed as Liverpool were. I can well imagine that Van Dijk told Liverpool that he was okay to wait six months, and Liverpool told Van Dijk they would definitely purchase him in January, and therefore, they had a clear run on it.
I suspect Gibbs-White might be a slightly different scenario where it’s a little less certain. If he had a very good half of the season, let’s say, there could be other teams that would be interested in buying him. And then there’s the question as to what does happen now with a release clause that the whole world knows about.
“So right now, any club presumably could pick up the phone to Nottingham Forest and say, ‘Well, we’re triggering the release clause. We clearly didn’t breach the confidentiality [agreement]. Nothing to do with us. We discovered it through The Athletic, through David Ornstein reporting it. That’s how we learned about it. It’s got nothing to do with us. We didn’t realise that Spurs had breached the confidentiality and we’re paying £60m’. And all of a sudden, the player’s going somewhere else.”
What is the most likely scenario with Gibbs-White?
Despite shooting that warning to Tottenham Hotspur, Borson believes that Gibbs-White is likely going to end up at Spurs sooner rather than later.
However, he insisted that as things stand, the transfer is not guaranteed to happen, backing Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, to continue fighting his corner.
Borson added: “I still think the most likely scenario is that Spurs are the only team that want to buy the player right now, that they’ll pay an extra, let’s say, £5-10m, maybe an extra £5m plus £5m, and the deal could get done.
“That would be the most likely outcome, but I don’t think anything’s guaranteed, especially because Marinakisis, being quite an aggressive and forthright business player, and that’s the same on the Spurs side. So it’s going to be interesting.”
The post Tottenham Hotspur warned about risk of Morgan Gibbs-White transfer hijack appeared first on Spurs Web.