It should probably go without saying that the transfer rumor vultures are circulating around the injured body of Tottenham Hotspur, so we should expect a lot of reports that other clubs are wanting to pick off any number of Spurs players this summer. Like this one! According to The Athletic’s Manchester United beat writer Laurie Whitwell, United are in the market for a new central defender and Micky van de Ven is one of the options they’re considering.
The gist is that United have two young defenders
— Leny Yoro and Ayden Heaven — that they want to develop and turn into first team regulars, but they’re also considering an experienced central defender as a stop-gap and to bolster their Champions League roster. Van de Ven is considered one potential option for them, and the thought is he might consider a Spurs exit whether or not Tottenham save themselves from relegation in what remains of the season.
A name being considered is Micky Van de Ven. The 25-year-old, who spoke to Gary Neville on The Overlap podcast in December, is expected to attract interest, whatever division Tottenham Hotspur end up in. His contract runs to 2029, so his value is protected. There is the irony that if Spurs are relegated, it would ease the exit path for some of their best players.
— Laurie Whitwell, The Athletic
That’s not exactly a surprise, though if Spurs do stay up it would require Spurs to consent to selling Micky (not a given). If they go down, then I’d expect Micky would not be the only first team player to push through the exit door. Whitwell mentions Liverpool is another club keeping an eye on Micky’s status, along with “other major clubs in Europe.” No surprises there.
The other bit of rumor-mongering to mention today is the status of Destiny Udogie. According to The Sun’s Tom Barclay (a good reporter at a very bad newspaper), Udogie could potentially miss Saturday’s away match at already-relegated Wolves due to an undisclosed injury. I will not link to the report because it is the Sun; I’m sure you can find your way to that article if you really want to. But suffice it to say that this is only the first paper reporting this, and because it’s Barclay I’m inclined to think it’s possible.
It’s another blow for Spurs, and for Udogie who has missed significant parts of the season with injury. In fact, he had only recently come back from a hamstring injury that caused him to miss about a month. Udogie is a good player but at this point he appears to be made of glass, and him potentially missing more time shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
I assume that one of either Djed Spence or Souza would come in as Destiny’s replacement against Wolves, with Pedro Porro remaining on the left under Robert De Zerbi, but who knows what RDZ will do — it’s not like we have a corpus of matches for us to draw upon.
Wolves are a terrible team, but for whatever reason Spurs have been pretty dogshit against them the past three seasons. Spurs haven’t beaten Wolves at all since August 2022, and you have to go back to August 2021 — under Nuno Espirito Santo — to find a the last time Spurs beat Wolves at the Molineux. That’s not to say Spurs won’t win on Saturday, but don’t expect it to be a given. These Wolves have teeth when they’re up against chicken clubs.
