Troy Deeney confirms he spoke to former Spurs boss about a move to N17

Recently retired Troy Deeney, who netted 47 Premier League goals in his five seasons at Watford, has confirmed that he spoke to former Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho about a move to the club back in 2020.

After Watford's five year stint in the top flight came to a lockdown in 2020, both Spurs and Arsenal showed interest in the then 32-year old striker.

Deeney spoke to talkSPORT about the potential move, saying: "Yeah, I had a chat with Jose. I didn’t speak to Mikel, that was more board-level interest at Arsenal. They were dealing with it, thinking about how we could make it happen.

Obviously I wasn’t going to these places looking to start, so it was kinda like the clubs were thinking, ‘Yeah let’s do it, as long as [his attitude is right].”

However, Mourinho said he preferred Carlos Vinicius, and ultimately, that is who the club ended up bringing in that summer. Deeney added: "They wanted Carlos Vinicius. He was their man target. And it got to the point where, if that didn’t happen, they’d bring me in. I had a chat with Jose and it was like, ‘What do you want to do? How do you want to do it?’ And Jose wanted to check that I could deal with going from being a main man to being one of the squad.

I was thinking about Fernando Llorente who went there previously, who kept scoring when he played. I said all I’m going to do is push Harry Kane to be the best version he can, and be his biggest cheerleader. Playing for Spurs was massively beyond my dreams.

Jose was straight with me, about [Carlos] Vinicius being a better fit and that they wanted to get that deal done. Unfortunately for me, they did sign him.”

The former Watford striker was fairly good in his pomp, and Spurs would have done well to sign him instead of Vincent Janssen back in 2016 when Deeney was in his prime, but he was most certainly over the hill in 2020 and it likely would not have been a great signing.