Victor Wanyama Completes Tottenham Medical

The arrival of Victor Wanyama to Tottenham Hotspur has reached the next phase as the Kenyan international just completed his medical. Within the next few days the signing should be announced.

Victor Wanyama has completed his medical at Tottenham after flying to London on Sunday. A transfer is now expected to happen relatively soon with the midfielder returning to his native Kenya today (Wednesday), according to ESPN UK.

Upon passing the medical, Wanyama openly spoke of how happy he was that he is inching closer to joining Tottenham after submitting a transfer request last summer before having it rejected.

Now with Ronald Koeman taking over the managerial role at Everton, Southampton have lost any negotiating power that they used to have. It’s another off-season in which the Saints are set to lose another key player.

The reported fee that both Tottenham and Southampton have agreed on is said to be around £12 million (per sources from ESPN FC), which is just a shade under the original price that the Saints paid to Celtic in 2013 (£12.5 million) when Wanyama moved to the Premier League.

As soon as the move is officially announced, Wanyama will be Spurs’ first summer signing this year as well as the first player Mauricio Pochettino has bought from the Saints side he coached two seasons ago.

Unfortunately, in the video above, there aren’t any highlights from Wanyama’s time with Mauricio Pochettino during the 2013-14 campaign.

That would have been the best way to see how the Kenyan international would perform in Tottenham’s team now compared to what the 24-year-old had three seasons ago with the Saints.

Of course if people could remember the post-match interview that Toby Alderweireld conducted following Tottenham’s 2-2 draw against Stoke City in their home opener, the Belgian international noted that Spurs needed a defensive midfielder like Wanyama or Morgan Schneiderlin to prevent a situation where they concede late.

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“You have to play better because if you don’t play football anymore then they can put more pressure on you, get more guys in the box, and it’s very difficult,” Alderweireld said (via London Evening Standard).

“At Southampton, Victor Wanyama and Morgan Schneiderlin put good pressure so they didn’t have time to put the ball in the box – it makes it easier for defenders.”

This was less of Alderweireld putting his teammates under the bus, and more of him making a point that what Mauricio Pochettino had with Eric Dier and Nabil Bentaleb — even Ryan Mason at central midfield — wasn’t enough at the time.

Of course this was during the early stages of Dier’s transformation from a center-back to Pochettino’s starting holding midfielder. Not to mention it was before Bentaleb’s form would go horribly bad after a decent-to-good season the previous year.

Fast forward to now and Dier has shown that he’s capable of doing a fine job at a new position. This doesn’t mean that a signing like Wanyama wasn’t needed, but now Alderweireld and the rest of his back line mates, and Hugo Lloris too, will have an easier time defending than before.

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The logistics of where to play Eric Dier and Victor Wanyama would suggest that Mauricio Pochettino could opt to play both at central midfield until Mousa Dembélé is reinstated to play after completing his six-match ban that he picked up after an eye poking incident with Chelsea’s Diego Costa.

Signing Wanyama is a good first step to hopefully improving the depth and bench that Pochettino didn’t have all of last season when he had to sub out his starters who were tired.

Central and defensive midfield will still need at least two more signings so that a combination of Nabil Bentaleb, Tom Carroll and/or Ryan Mason could be loaned out to gain more first team experience as they didn’t exactly cut it this past term.