Just days ago, Tottenham free-agent-to-be Ben Davies was expressing frustration at a lack of clarity on his future at the club, and he seemed to be assuming that his future lay outside of North London.
As a player on an expiring contract above the age of 30 and without a defined role in an increasingly younger team, Davies's pessimism wasn't exactly misguided. His main issue was that Tottenham weren't communicating anything about his future to him, leaving him in a state of limbo not unlike the one Ange Postecoglou experienced before being fired on Friday.
Well, unlike Postecoglou, Davies hasn't been fired, but rather extended. The 32-year-old officially received a contract extension on Sunday, as Tottenham agreed to pick up the one-year option on his current deal, meaning he won't be a free agent until the end of the 2025/26 season.
On the surface, the Davies news appears to be a sudden about-face towards a player who was very much on the periphery of the squad and whom most Tottenham beat writers were reporting would be on the way out this summer.
Daniel Levy only care about profit
The thing is, Davies's contract extension isn't the end of the story here. According to a report from The Daily Mail's Simon Jones, Wrexham are still intersted in signing Davies, and the recent contract extension may not change Tottenham's intention to let Davies go. The extension may merely be a means for Spurs to sell Davies for cash instead of letting him go for free.
Although Tottenham won't get much money for Davies - other than a few million pounds - since he is at the level of a lower-league team like Wrexham than one in the Premier League, Daniel Levy has always operated under a profit-driven mindset.
The gesture of keeping Davies for one more year after leaving him in the dark for weeks (months, even) may not be an unselfish one from Levy. After all, even Levy has to know that Davies has no future at the club and is simply taking a spot from a younger center back - not to mention up taking wages on Levy's "valuable ledger".
So it's more likely that Levy's isn't misguidedly keeping Davies around for the nostalgia, but, rather, stringing him along like he usually does, except now he's trying to find a way to pinch a few extra pennies out of a player who already gave a lot to this club in his career. Tottenham could have told Davies they didn't intend to keep him before the season ended and let him find a club like Wrexham as a free agent. Instead, Levy is likely playing a cruel game with Davies, too, extending him just to sell.