Tottenham Hotspur Loan Vincent Janssen
According to their official club twitter account, Tottenham Hotspur will loan Vincent Janssen to Turkish club Fenerbahce. The medical has been completed, and the player will sign imminently.
Vincent Janssen has passed medical check. #Fenerbahçe pic.twitter.com/cc7y7TZbVa
— Fenerbahce_EN (@Fenerbahce_EN) September 8, 2017
Loan to Sell?
This transfer suggests that Janssen is surplus to requirements, and thus will be eventually sold. After all, Spurs have brought in Fernando Llorente to back up Harry Kane, but appear to have no space in their squad for Janssen. This means that as a result, there would still only be two strikers at the club, suggesting a lack of depth. Thus, if the deal was to be made permanent at the end of the season, a new striker would need to be secured.
Bench Warmer
A loan may allow Janssen to flourish again as a football player. At Spurs, he is very lacking in game time, which could be a motive behind the move. Janssen has been struggling, confined to cameos late on in matches, with the odd start in cup matches. Without these precious minutes, it is difficult to generate any kind of form. Whilst a professional player trains throughout the week, it is still not comparable to a match day. Therefore, the loan to Fenerbahce may just allow Janssen to grab those vital minutes, to rediscover his old confidence.
Foreign Move
It is bizarre that the only loan Spurs could secure for Janssen was for a Turkish club. There would have been much greater sense loaning him to a domestic club. This is because whilst Janssen may get match time, he will be playing in a foreign league. By comparison, the Premier League and the Super Lig offer different variations of football. Arguably, the Turkish league also operates at an inferior level, and thus Janssen’s loan doesn’t help the player on his return to Spurs. The player proved in the Eredivisie that he could score goals, leaving AZ Alkmaar in 2016 as the league’s top goalscorer with 27 goals. But, currently, he has only two goals at his new club.
A much better move, therefore, would have been to loan Janssen to a Premier League club. There are many smaller clubs in the league that would have eagerly accepted him. This could have been the player’s choice, seeing a loan to a lesser team as a step-down. But, he rejected Brighton’s offer and instead is set to travel abroad. This poses an unnecessary period of adaptation to two different countries and their respective styles of football. Thus, the loan seems to gear towards a permanent transfer.
Verdict
Tottenham’s decision to loan Vincent Janssen to Fenerbache appears to be an odd choice. That is, if they wish to develop the player, the club should have loaned him to another Premier League club. However, if the club are going to sell the player, this may just be a loan to generate some interest to finally offload him. Overall, Spurs would not miss Janssen but may rue limiting their squad’s depth by such a move.
