Ashley Phillips has yet to make his professional debut for Tottenham Hotspur, and now it looks like he probably won’t. Michael Bridge of Sky Sports is reporting that Middlesbrough is currently in active negotiations to sign Phillips in what will probably be a permanent deal, not a loan.
We don’t know the fee yet, but we know that Phillips is already established at the Championship level. He’s spent the past two seasons on loan with Stoke City where he became a regular in the back line, and he was on loan at Plymouth Argyle before that. He’s clearly a good option in the second division and while I expect he’ll eventually make the leap to Premier League footballer, for now this feels like an expected move.
Boro are making moves in the transfer window and are clearly angling for a promotion push this season. They’ve already signed Will “BIG WILLY LANKS” Lankshear this summer and it seems like Spurs and Boro have a good enough relationship that they’re coming back to the well. Boro made the promotion playoffs last season but lost to Hull City in the final at Wembley.
Considering Spurs only spent £2m to sign Phillips a couple of years ago and that the central defense situation is pretty locked down right now, selling Ash makes a ton of sense. I suspect this will be a fee in the £10-12m range or so which would represent a pretty good ROI for a player that Spurs essentially house-flipping. That would be a pretty substantial fee; Boro’s transfer record is £17m. I’d also expect a Rafi Moersen sell-on/price matching clause in there as well. But we’ll find out eventually.
