Fabrizio Romano: Tottenham negotiate discounted fee to sign Dejan Kulusevski permanently from Juventus
Fabrizio Romano claims Tottenham have completed the permanent transfer of Dejan Kulusevski from Juventus for a fee of £25.6million.
Writing on his CaughtOffside Substack on Sunday (18 June), Romano reported that Spurs’ initial option-to-buy clause to sign Kulusevski this summer was £29.9million.
However, it is understood that Spurs have negotiated a discount with Juventus because they’ll be paying for the deal in fewer instalments than originally planned.
Spurs announced Kulusevski’s arrival officially on their Twitter account on Saturday night (17 June).
Needs to rediscover his spark
Signing Kulusevski on a permanent basis was a no-brainer because, for less than £30million, Spurs are getting themselves a player who they know can perform in the Premier League and has his best years ahead of him.
The Sweden international is only 23 years old and already has 29 senior caps, 94 Serie A appearances and 48 Premier League appearances to his name.
Last season wasn’t a great one for Kulusevski, admittedly.
The former Atalanta attacker scored just two goals in 30 Premier League appearances and supplied seven assists.
It’s a far cry from what he achieved in North London when he first joined on loan midway through the 2021/22 season when he scored five times and supplied eight assists in 18 Premier League appearances.
FBRef stats show, however, that in the last 12 months, Kulusevski has averaged a terrible 0.08 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes of game-time and a rotten non-penalty xG of just 0.11.
For assists, he’s a lot better because his 0.28 assists per game – from an xAG of 0.19 – ranks him in the 79th percentile among attacking midfielders and wingers over the last 12 months.
However, Harry Kane’s exploits in front of the goal no doubt boost Kulusevski’s numbers; five of his seven assists in the Premier League last season were for Kane to score.
Kulusevski’s got to improve.
Everyone at Spurs knows he can play at an unbelievable level and maybe the appointment of Ange Postecoglou as the manager will help out massive because at Celtic last season, Jota scored 11 goals and supplied 11 assists in 34 league appearances playing on both the left and right wings.
It’s not as straightforward as saying Kulusevski will do better because Postecoglou’s wingers at Celtic did well. He’ll be playing against Manchester City and Liverpool next season, not St Mirren and Livingston.
This is a good deal for Tottenham from what we’ve seen so far but it remains to be seen whether that opinion will stand up in a year’s time.
In other Tottenham news, Paul Robinson has reacted to the news of David Raya’s potential arrival in North London.