There may not be any Devine intervention this summer regarding the future of 21-year-old Tottenham Hotspur attacker Alfie Devine. According Alan Nixon (Patreon feed, relayed via Lancashire Post), Preston North End, where Devine spent the 2025-26 season on loan, is in the process of negotiating a £4.5m fee for Alfie that would see him join Deepdale permanently this summer. Personal terms have already been agreed, though Devine is free to decline the deal if he doesn’t feel it fits into his best interests.
Alan Nixon is a former chief football writer for the S-n (a newspaper whose website you should never visit) and these days he’s gone independent, putting all his scoops behind a paywall on his Patreon feed. I have no intention of paying money to read Alan Nixon’s transfer rumors, but I will admit that in terms of reliability he’s somewhere in the upper quartile for football rumor mongers.
The gist is this — Spurs and Preston apparently came to an agreement at the beginning of the season for Alfie to head to Deepdale on loan, with a purchase option — the £4.5m fee listed above. Devine had a pretty excellent season on loan at Preston, scoring 8 goals and notching 8 assists in over 3000 minutes in all competitions — that’s pretty darn good for a 21-year-old playing in the Championship, despite Preston finishing 14th. Preston is apparently working with Spurs to come to a favorable amortization schedule, since Preston isn’t exactly flush with cash, something that I have no doubt Spurs will agree to with a little negotiation.
The downside to this is that a) Alfie’s finally rounding into form, and b) £4.5m feels like a pretty low-ball fee for a player who looks like he could be a solid Championship player and maybe a future Premier League caliber footballer, at least according to Nathan A. Clark of The Extra Inch.
This obviously wouldn’t be the first time Spurs might have misevaluated their youth talent and likely won’t be the last. Even so, I don’t know if you can say with certainty that Devine is going to be a player who can establish himself in the Tottenham Hotspur first team, unless y’know… relegation, which is why I suspect nothing will be finalized with Alfie and Preston until after the end of the Premier League season anyway.
For what it’s worth, in quotes given to the Lancashire Post, Devine seems to be keen on putting himself in the best possible situation for his career.
“What next season will look like, I can’t really tell you. But, I know that I’ll be pushing for the thing that probably will be the best for me and what I want for myself, not what other people will want for me.
“There’s obviously the buy option in the loan and stuff. It’s hard to say whether that’ll happen or that won’t happen, because in football things change so fast. I’ll be sure to pick something that’s right for me and if that takes time, then it takes time.”
I don’t think this is necessarily something to get angry or indignant about. £4.5m isn’t chump change for a talented young footballer, and anyway the majority of Spurs’ U21 talent is going to be sold to other clubs eventually. If Spurs have a few clauses in the deal — sell-on, buy-back, etc. — that’s fairly decent business, especially if Alfie is sold and then develops well over the next couple of seasons.
