Tottenham are using Mauro Icardi

Tottenham are not a serious threat to sign Inter Milan striker Mauro Icardi

Tottenham fans shouldn’t get excited about the prospect of bringing Inter Milan striker Mauro Icardi to White Hart Lane. Daniel Levy is just using Icardi as a threat to the club’s real striker targets.

The Express are reporting that Spurs are contemplating a 38 million pound move for the talented Argentine hit man. That makes for a good story in the tabloids, but it’s highly unlikely that Tottenham have just planted the story to put pressure on Antonio Sanabria and/or Victor Janssen.

It’s just simple logic. Spurs clearly have a bona fide superstar striker in the form of Harry Kane. Going out to purchase another star-quality front man just doesn’t make sense unless you believe Mauricio Pochettino is open to moving to a multiple striker system. I tend to think he’s pretty set on his 4-2-3-1 at the moment.

Paying 38 million pounds for a back-up striker doesn’t seem like a move that Levy is going to sanction during our lifetime. It would go against everything he’s stood for previously, and everything the club has stated about being financially prudent while the new stadium is constructed.

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In truth, Icardi isn’t even a perfect fit for how Pochettino wants Tottenham to play. While I think he’s a terrifically talented goal scorer, he doesn’t have the work rate that the Spurs manager demands out of his forwards. He managed to score 16 goals in Serie A play last year, but still finished the campaign with a Whoscored.com player rating below 7. That illustrates just how incomplete his game can be.

For those of you keeping score, that means that Icardi isn’t a good fit for the way Tottenham plays, and carries a price tag far above what Spurs are likely to spend on a backup. It makes you wonder why Spurs are even linked to the Inter Milan star.

My belief is that after Michy Batshuayi committed to sign with Chelsea, Levy needed another big name target to use in negotiations with his real targets. Without the spectre of someone like Icardi, the clubs of Sanabria and Janssen would feel a great deal of power in negotiations. WIth Icardi introduced as a threat to be signed ahead of their strikers, they feel some pressure to capitulate to Tottenham’s demands.

In particular, Janssen’s club, AZ Alkmaar, have irritated Tottenham with their hardline negotiations as of late. The player has characterized a move to White Hart Lane as his dream move, and Spurs have made what they believe is a very fair offer for his services. The Icardi rumor might just be enough pressure to force the Eredivisie club to accept Spurs’ terms.

Daniel Levy may get a lot of stick from Tottenham fans due to his miserly negotiating tactics, but they can’t say that he doesn’t use every trick in the book to get his targets to Tottenham. That’s why Spurs are using Mauro Icardi to bring their real striker targets closer to making a move to White Hart Lane.

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