Al-Ittihad wanted to sign Tottenham forward Richarlison after Mo Salah failure – report
Al-Ittihad were interested in signing Richarlison from Tottenham before the Saudi Arabian transfer window closed earlier this week, according to The Telegraph.
The newspaper reported on Saturday (9 September) that after having a £150million bid for Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah rejected, Al-Ittihad turned their attention towards signing 26-year-old Richarlison before the Saudi Pro League transfer window closed on Thursday night (7 September).
However, it is understood that Nuno Espirito Santo’s team didn’t follow up their interest with a bid for the Brazil international despite holding talks through intermediaries.
Nuno’s on the hunt
Nuno might finally be able to do Tottenham a favour if the ex-Spurs boss re-ignites his interest in Richarlison in the January transfer window.
Richarlison cost Spurs an initial £50million when he left Everton for North London last summer but he’s since scored just four goals in 40 appearances across all competitions despite averaging roughly a goal every three games on Merseyside.
Only one of those goals have come in the Premier League too with the former Watford attacker seriously struggling to adapt to life playing for Tottenham while half of them came in the same game against Marseille in the Champions League last season.
So far this term, the forward has started three games in the league and hasn’t scored once, with stats by WhoScored showing that he’s only managed to fire four shots at goal, an average of 1.5 per 90 minutes of game-time.
As a result, he’s generated a low xG of just 0.4 and his poor overall play in the forward areas gives him an xA (expected assists) of zero [FBref].
It’s unthinkable that a £50million signing could turn out so badly and have such little impact.
What makes Richarlison’s form so worrying in the opening four games of the season is that Spurs, as a whole, have been in brilliant form under new manager Ange Postecoglou.
Tottenham have won three and drawn one of their opening four league fixtures even though they’ve had a couple of testing games against Brentford away and Manchester United.
Richarlison’s letting the side down. His xG is unbelievably lower than Ben Davies’ 0.6 and the same as Pedro Porro’s 0.4 while his xA is on a par with the centre-backs and goalkeeper Vicario Guglielmo.
Al-Ittihad, therefore, could be more than welcome to sign the Brazilian international in the eyes of the Spurs faithful.
Nuno made a mistake by taking the Spurs job in 2021 and he could another mistake with the North London club by signing goal-shy Richarlison.
In other Tottenham news, the club’s summer net spend shows that some progress was made, but not enough.