Back at the start of the year when Ivan Toney had just returned to the Brentford starting line-up after his ban, the chatter appeared to be that it was a foregone conclusion that the 28-year-old would be heading to Germany with England.
His four goals in his opening five games, per WhoScored, only strengthened that notion.
Paying top dollar for his services if he was going to move on from West London also didn’t necessarily appear to be out of the question.
Since that purple patch in late January/early February, however, the striker has gone right off the boil.
Ivan Toney’s value slashed by half
To that end his transfer fee will have been revised significantly as Thomas Frank will know that the club can no longer market him as a £100m player, which they were back in November according to Sky Sports.
He’d arguably be nearer the £40m-£50m bracket nowadays, and with Tottenham Hotspur apparently looking for a striker, there’s a possibility that Toney could fit the bill.
However, rumours linking the Lilywhites with the Bees hit-man appear wide of the mark, at least for now.
“Although it’s expected that Tottenham will sign a striker this summer, there’s no concrete update yet on Ivan Toney, despite reports,” Fabrizio Romano said to CaughtOffside for his Daily Briefing.
“He might be one of the strikers being considered at Spurs but no final decision on their top target has been made yet.
“Tottenham’s priority was to decide what to do with Timo Werner, and now they will move into next targets.”
If Spurs were able to acquire Toney for a reasonable market value, there’s no reason why he couldn’t resurrect his career under Ange Postecoglou.
The Australian has shown that he can motivate his players to play some brilliant football, and arguably Toney is a better marksman than Richarlison has been for the North Londoners.
With James Maddison providing a supplementary attacking presence and the likes of Timo Werner and Heung Min-son alongside, Toney should find goals easy to come by if he moves to North London.
Time will tell if the club consider him to be the right man for the job moving forward.
