Tottenham submit £30m ‘formal offer’ for Barcelona star as Spurs ‘push hard’ for deadline day deal | OneFootball

Tottenham have made an offer for Barcelona centre-back Ronald Araujo as they look to get a deal over the line on deadline day, according to reports.

After Spurs came from two goals down to earn a point at home to Manchester City, thanks to two goals from Dominic Solanke, Thomas Frank promised Tottenham will be “active” in the transfer market on deadline day.

He told reporters after the match when asked about deadline day: “We are active, no doubt about that. If something happens, let’s see.”

In the winter transfer window, Tottenham have already signed England international Conor Gallagher from Atletico Madrid and Brazilian left-back Souza from Santos.

They have been linked with a number of players over the last week and now reports in Spain are claiming that they’ve lodged a bid for Barcelona centre-back Araujo, who has been linked heavily with a move to the Premier League over the last year.

Spanish website Fichajes claims that Barcelona have received an ‘offer’ from Tottenham worth €35m (£30m) to sign Uruguayan centre-back Araujo before the transfer deadline.

The report adds: ‘The proposal is structured as a fixed fee of €30 million plus €5 million in add-ons, a formula that FC Barcelona is already analysing internally.’

With Araujo not playing his best football at the moment, Barcelona are concerned that his market value will only decrease in the future, which ‘adds pressure’ to their decision.

Tottenham’s interest ‘has now materialized with a formal offer’ and Spurs are hoping Barcelona ‘might be tempted to accept due to their current financial situation’.

The report continues: ‘The potential departure of Ronald Araujo is causing internal division. Part of the club believes that letting go of a center-back of his age could be a significant sporting risk. Others believe FC Barcelona should be pragmatic.’

After coming from behind to earn a point against Man City on Sunday, Frank was asked why his side couldn’t start games with more urgency, he said: “I wish I could (clicks fingers) do it like that. Then it would be easy. It’s not. I need to look at the game back. I think we did still some okay things in the first half and just made two mistakes.

“They punished the first one so hard after 12 minutes which makes things more difficult to come into a football game, but what I liked of the second half is we were even more aggressive in the high pressure, and finally the 50-50s landed a little bit more for us. It felt like everything landed for them in the first half.

“Mid pressure was good so not too much through us and then we played more behind them and hurt them more in that way. How united the fans and the players were second half. That’s what we need to build. The fans helped us massively and pushed us towards a big point and they were fantastic against Dortmund so can we do that more and more consistently together we can create some magic.”