Tottenham Hotspur watched Son Heung-min leave the club in the summer transfer window by his own volition, and the biggest legend in the club's history is currently enjoying his time in the United States. Meanwhile, Tottenham are playing great football without him because of all the new additions, especially Thomas Frank as the manager, but there are still serious questions about the left wing spot that Son left behind.
Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert are highly promising wingers, and they have proven that at the U21 level for the French national team. But that's not the same as being stars in the Premier League every week, and while the two young guns are flashing real potential, neither are the finished product yet.
After striking out on Savinho in the summer transfer window and then watching the Brazilian re-sign with Manchester City despite a rather dreary start to the 2025/26 season, Spurs are back to the drawing board on the left wing.
One player they considered signing on the right wing before settling on countryman Mohammed Kudus was Ghanaian winger Antoine Semenyo over at Bournemouth. Well, Semenyo has been even better this season, taking down Tottenham head-to-head and outplaying everyone else in the Premier League with six goals and three assists, starring on both wings for the Cherries.
Another hidden release clause for Tottenham to find
Now all the big clubs in England want a piece of Semenyo, and while Bournemouth want even more money for the 25-year-old next year than they did in 2025, that may not matter depending on one key factor.
TalkSPORT's Alex Crook reports that Antoine Semenyo actually has a release clause in his contract with Bournemouth that will be ready to be activated next year. However, the Cherries really don't want to lose Semenyo, so they have been keeping the exact price of it under wraps, which sounds eerily similar to a recent example from a failed Tottenham summer 2025 transfer.
Tottenham inadvertently triggered the release clause of Nottingham Forest star attacking midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White with a bid of 60 million pounds. That led to Evangelos Marinakis and Forest having a meltdown, throwing a tantrum, and blocking the transfer by threatening legal action before getting MGW to sign a new contract in all the mess.
It stands to reason, then, that if Semenyo has a release clause that Bournemouth really don't want clubs to know about, then it must be lower than the 75+ million pounds they are asking for. Since it hasn't been triggered yet, that also implies that it must be active from and until a certain point, so Bournemouth could either accept a bid sooner if their results fade or end up losing him for less than they want in 2026.
That's a lot of "what if" and conjecture, and it opens a whole can of worms for both the Tottenham fans who are dreaming of another top-class Premier League winger like Semenyo, as well as the fans who don't want to bother with another player whose childhood club is none other than Arsenal.