Tottenham Hotspur need a new 6 pretty badly, but thus far all the good transfer rumors have been for wide midfielders and wingers. Take this one, from Goal.com author (and Friend of the Blog™) Harry Sherlock, who writes that Spurs have made a £50m approach to West Ham for Mohammed Kudus.
Kudus is a good player who’s coming off of a pretty awful year for West Ham this past season. He had a promising 8g+6a in 2023-24 in about 2400 minutes, but saw his production dip to 5g+3a for the Hammers this season as West Ham finished an anemic 14th in the table. But Kudus has a bag full of tools, and there’s some suggestion that he could rebound in a better system and with a better team around him. Is that Spurs? Well, we’d all like to think so, wouldn’t we?
Kudus is a versatile attacker, able to play in a number of positions but frequently deployed wide. He’s agile and technically sound, loves to dribble guys, and excels in tight spaces. He played a lot on the wing for West Ham, but he’s a very adept central attacking midfielder. And when he’s on, he’s ON — he once had 14 successful dribbles in a match against Chelsea in May 2024, a Premier League record. This season he averaged just over 3 dribbles/90, a significant downturn from his past record. He’s also a good passer, something Spurs pretty desperately need.
The problem with this rumor is twofold: first, Spurs’ £50m approach is significantly lower than West Ham’s asking price of £65m (which feels like a stretch if I’m honest). Secondly, Spurs haven’t done any business with West Ham since 2012 since WHU chairman David Gold reportedly hates Daniel Levy’s guts and won’t do business with him. Will that change now that Levy’s stepping back and Gold has to deal with Fabio Paratici and Vinai Venkatesham? Who knows!
I like Kudus. I would like to think that this past season is a bit of an outlier and he could rekindle some of his previous excitement with a change of scenery. It’s neat that we’re linked with him because I think he could cook under Thomas Frank. The fact that West Ham despises us doesn’t do us any favors, though so if this is going to happen it’s probably going to take a lot more than £50m.