Tottenham news: New contract will improve Christian Eriksen's form

Christian Eriksen’s new deal will benefit Tottenham immediately

Tottenham fans have been wringing their hands about the possibility of losing Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen almost since the day he arrived at White Hart Lane. Now Spurs fans can take a collective deep breath. The stylish number ten has signed a contract that will keep him with the club until 2020.

The club announced the deal yesterday, but declined to reveal Eriksen’s new wages. It’s generally believed that he’ll now earn somewhere around 75,000 pounds per week. That will put him in line with the club’s other high earners like Harry Kane and Hugo Lloris.

The long-term benefits for Tottenham are fairly obvious. Manager Mauricio Pochettino is building a squad entirely in his image, and inking Eriksen to a new contract will allow him to keep his core together. That continuity should pay big dividends down the line.

What isn’t quite as obvious, is how Eriksen’s new deal can benefit Spurs in the immediate short-term. That’s where I think there’s a great deal of hidden value in the deal.

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It’s clear that Eriksen hasn’t been himself to start the season. He’s looked at least a yard off the pace, and just hasn’t been able to control the game in his usual manner. If we’re honest, he’s been one of Tottenham’s weakest players through three games.

It’s quite possible that Eriksen’s fatigue was as much mental as physical. His contract negotiations with Tottenham have been going on for a long time. It’s even rumored that Pochettino had to personally step in to get things moving again.

Those sort of protracted, tense negotiations surely weighed on the midfielder’s mind. You can just imagine the sort of self-doubt that had to creep in his mind. He and his representatives thought his play was worth a certain amount, only to be repeatedly told by the club that it wasn’t worth near that figure.

Just imagine how you’d feel if that happened at your workplace. If you continually told your boss you were worth double your current wages, and your boss repeatedly shot you down. Now complicate things even further by assuming that other companies are constantly calling you to tell you they’d be willing to provide you the wages you think you deserve. See how frustrating that would be?

We think of professional football players as robots who are able to separate their personal feelings from life on the pitch. That’s just an unreasonable expectation. Eriksen is a human being. Of course he was bothered and distracted by long, tough contract negotiations.

New Tottenham contract will improve Christian Eriksen’s form

By Rucker Haringey | Sep 7, 2016

Christian Eriksen’s new deal will benefit Tottenham immediately

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