Tottenham Hoping to Sign Sven Bender
With no midfield signing yet, Tottenham hope to fix that soon.
Mauricio Pochettino has turned his attention to the midfield position (along with striker and winger), but so far nothing has materialized even with rumors heavily linking Tottenham to James McCarthy. With Everton unwilling to sell the 24-year-old Irishman to Tottenham, Spurs have decided to turn their attention to another midfielder.
Tottenham are looking at German international, Sven Bender, and seeing if his current situation with Borussia Dortmund might be enough to persuade him to leave the Westfalenstadion for White Hart Lane.
The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Tottenham are planning to make a bid — an ambitious one — to sign the 26-year-old defensive midfielder in order to fix a glaring hole that plagued the club throughout last season. Mauricio Pochettino didn’t have a true defensive midfielder that he trusted to play last season and now he has none following the sales of Étienne Capoue and Benjamin Stambouli.
How did Sven Bender become a potential target for Tottenham?
From the aforementioned article, Matt Law writes:
"“German international Bender was a regular in Jurgen Klopp’s successful Dortmund team, but was left on the substitutes’ bench for the club’s Europa League game against Wolfsberger on Thursday night. Tottenham now hope to take advantage of the fact Bender, who has two years remaining on his contract, may not be part of new manager Thomas Tuchel’s plans for the coming season.”"
With an abundance of midfielders at Tuchel’s disposal — five of them including Sven Bender — Bender’s time might be running out with Borussia Dortmund. Two midfielders are returning, Ilkay Gundogan (contract extension) and Nuri Şahin with two new players signed, Gonzalo Castro (Bayer Leverkusen) and Julian Weigl (1860 Munich).
Due to Thomas Tuchel’s preference for Julian Weigl’s passing style — supposedly much safer than Bender’s — Tuchel might see Sven Bender as surplus to requirments.
From Raphael Honigstein’s Twitter account:
19-year-old Julian Weigl preferred to Sven Bender as DM by Tuchel....
— Raphael Honigstein💙 (@honigstein) July 30, 2015
If that tweet is true and Sven Bender currently has two years left on his contract, perhaps a potential sale is imminent. Where the 26-year-old German international will go is unknown. But because Tottenham have sent out a “transfer delegation” to Germany to discuss transfers and Bender’s name has recently popped up, it’s possible that something could be in the works.
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No bids have been formally made, and going off of his Transfermarkt page, his current value is only €13 million (£9m) which seems awfully low.
But based on his recent injury history, his current age and contract situation, it might actually make sense to sign him for £9 million or less. The only negative right now would be his recent injuries from his Transfermarkt page.
Since joining BVB during the 2009-10 season, for the past six seasons, Bender has suffered an injury in five of those years. He has missed plenty of games during the ’13-’14 and ’14-’15 season with major injuries. It’s not known if he will last an entire 38-game season in the Premier League, which is more physical than the Bundesliga, but he will be classified as the perfect high-risk, high-reward type of signing for Mauricio Pochettino.
He will obviously bring plenty of experience to a young club as well as Champions League experience. So far, no other signings have been announced and the new league season begins in seven days with the transfer window closing in one month. Some more work must be done if Tottenham hope to crack the top four.