Everton drop price for Ross Barkley to £35 million: Should Tottenham bite?

The Ross Barkley saga continues, with new reports filtering in suggesting that Everton have dropped their asking price from £50 to £35 million. 

Is that a reasonable price and should Tottenham take the bait?

First and foremost, and regardless of the slashed potential transfer fee, Barkley must drop his outrageous salary demands for Spurs to contemplate buying the Toffees’ outcast.

Barkley, the Telegraph reports, has requested a weekly pay packet of £150,000. That is £50,000 more than Harry Kane’s weekly salary. It’s a nonsensical request, one that highlights Barkley’s unfounded hubris. Top players are usually wired in a certain way, many of whom carry themselves with the kind of uncurbed arrogance everyday Joe’s would get beat up for displaying.

Barkley, though he obviously has a contrary opinion, has not yet earned the right to harbour such belligerent narcissism. To ask for more money than Kane, Tottenham’s two-time Premier League Golden Boot winner, is as outlandish as it is disrespectful.

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Nobody is questioning the attacking midfielder’s potential, talent and skill set, but to ask Daniel Levy to make him Spurs’ highest-paid player while busting the chairman’s wage structure wide open highlights Barkley’s immaturity and holier-than-though persona.

Chelsea and Arsenal are both showing interest so there is a chance – more so from the west Londoners – that Barkley may actually be granted his insane, swollen salary request. He’s definitely barking up the wrong tree if he expects Tottenham to concede.

Let’s say for argument’s sake that Barkley accepts a reasonable salary offer, somewhere in the region of £75,000 per week.

Should Tottenham then meet Everton’s £35 million asking price?

It is a more fair valuation in today’s current market, though I reckon £30 million is a more accurate price for the enigmatic 23-year-old.

Mauricio Pochettino knows how to nurture and mold players of Barkley’s impressionable age to his liking, and would thereby almost certainly extract the best from the inconsistent midfielder. Barkley, if nurtured delicately, could be an invaluable asset for Tottenham, especially with the pervading concerns about Mousa Dembele’s fitness.

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However, even if the many kinks are ironed out, Barkley will not walk into Spurs’ first team.

He’ll be faced with the daunting task of earning his Tottenham stripes, a potentially time-consuming undertaking which favours modest, humble, patient and gracious players.

Many of those qualities lie dormant in Barkley but Pochettino is precisely the right manager to awaken them. If he compromises on the salary front, Barkley is a £35 million risk worth taking.