Spurs target Klaas-Jan Huntelaar wants £4.3m to quit Real Madrid

25 July 2009 09:18
Tottenham are hopeful that they can still strike a deal to sign Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, despite Harry Redknapp insisting he will not beheld to ransom by the Real Madrid striker. Huntelaar looked set for a move to Stuttgart this week, only for the deal to collapse when the German club refused to match his wage demands. The Holland international earns £55,000 a week after tax and is determined that Real's desire to force him out does not leave him out of pocket. Tottenham would need to pay more than £90,000 a week to match Huntelaar's current terms, but the ray of hope for Redknapp is that his top target would be willing to drop his demands if Real give him a£4.3million pay-off. Real are desperate to offload Huntelaar, as he does not fit into new manager Manuel Pellegrini's plans and they can register only 25 players for the forthcoming La Liga season. Huntelaar, however, signed a contract until 2013 when he moved from Ajax for an initial fee of £19mand is determined to leave on his own terms. With AC Milan re-entering the bidding, according to reports in Italy, Spurs are keen to move fast and more talks are planned between Huntelaar's agent and Real officials this weekend in an attempt to break the impasse. Tottenham flop Gilberto ends White Hart Lane career by mutual consent Redknapp: I missed out on Diarra, but Vieira and Beckham won't be coming Huntelaar is preferred to Peter Crouch by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy, who does not view Portsmouth's £12million asking price for a player with little or no sell-on value as good business. Redknapp hopes his chairman is ready to dig deep as Tottenham's defensive crisis means he is also looking for reinforcements at the back. With Jonathan Woodgate and Michael Dawson injured and likely to miss the start of the campaign and skipper Ledley King yet to kick a ball in preseason, Redknapp is expected to step up his pursuit of Newcastle centre back Sebastien Bassong. But the uncertainty surrounding the ownership at St James' Park, with Mike Ashley standing firm over his £100m asking price, is slowing progress. What Redknapp will be desperate to avoid is a repeat of last season's transfer window which was dominated by Levy's determination to extract the best possible prices for Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane. Many Spurs fans questioned the wisdom of hanging on to Berbatov until the final day of the January transfer window. Levy's hard bargaining left former director of football Damien Comolli desperately trying, but failing, to sign either West Ham's Carlton Cole or Reading's Kevin Doyle at the 11th hour, before eventually plumping for Fraizer Campbell on a season-long loan. Roman Pavlyuchenko and Vedran Corluka arrived only at the very end of the summer window - the Russian joining too late to be registered for the UEFA Cup campaign - and many fans blamed Tottenham's disastrous start to the season under Juande Ramos on the late upheaval. Levy is already showing a similar determination when it comes to player sales this summer, as the case of Darren Bent demonstrates. Bent is understood to be desperate to quit White Hart Lane and is keen on a move to underland. But Spurs are unwilling to part with him for less than the £16.5m they paid Charlton two years ago, while Steve Bruce values the player in the region of £12m. Redknapp is keen to generate funds with player sales, especially as he also wants to bring in an experienced central midfielder such as Inter Milan's Patrick Vieira. But speeding up that process needs Levy to dispense with some of his legendary stubbornness when it comes to transfer dealings. Didier Zokora and Chris Gunter have already been sold to Sevilla and Nottingham Forest respectively for a total of just over £10m but most of that was spent on signing young defenders Kyle Naughton and Kyle Walker from Sheffield United. The termination of Brazilian flop Gilberto's contract yesterday has done nothing to increase Redknapp's spending power, neither has sending out Troy Archibald-Henville to Exeter City on loan for six months and Ben Alnwick to Norwich for three months. And while Naughton and Walker are promising players for the future, signing Huntelaar would give Spurs fans hope that their side can enjoy a better start to the campaign and improve on last season's eighth place. Tottenham flop Gilberto ends White Hart Lane career by mutual consent Redknapp: I missed out on Diarra, but Vieira and Beckham won't be coming

Source: Daily_Mail