Agent confirms Bentaleb story is rubbish

TRANSFER TALK

As reported as soon as the story broke and was incorrectly reported by every website I came across, Nabil Bentaleb is no going to Benfica, Tottenham have not discussed a move with Benfica, the two clubs are not and have never been in negotiations.

The story from Portuguese merely said Benfica would be happy to enter negotiations, which all and sundry read all sort of things into that simply didn't exist. I even saw one Spurs fan account on Twitter saying a deal was almost done!

How do you get that from a report saying one club would be happy to enter negotiations. The story was no different that Tottenham saying we would be happy to enter negotiations for Lionel Messi. It's meaningless.

Why can't people just stop and think, why would Nabil Bentaleb, a proven Premier League player, still with great potential, want to go to a second tier league? It would be a backward step in his career when he doesn't need to take a backward step, he could easily play in Italy, Spain or Germany, in sides that usually qualify for the Champions League.

Why would Spurs want to loan him to a second tier league, why not loan him o a top tier league, if we wanted to lean him out? If he isn't part of Pochettino's plans then we don't need to keep him. He is one player though that we could loan out to improve, increase his value and then sell him next summer because he signed a five-year contract last summer. But, that might price him out of the market, unless we put a sensible price on him.

To show what utter nonsense the story was A Bola contacted his agent, Madjid Yebda, who hadn't heard from Benfica at all and that his client wanted to stay in the Premier League. The Independent has guessed that we might be asking £10-million for him, which sounds rather cheap in the market today.

Southampton bought Ryan Bertrand from Chelsea for £10-million last summer and he couldn't get anywhere near the Chelsea first team. He had played 1 Premier League game in 2013/14 and couldn't get in the Aston Villa side when he went there on loan. Bentaleb was brought into the Premier League and looked a natural.

Clearly there is plenty there to work on and someone would be getting an absolute bargain at that price.

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