Tottenham Hostpur have been dealt a blow in their bid to bring Takehiro Tomiyasu to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this summer.
What's the talk?
That's according to a report by Italian publication Il Resto del Carlino (via Sport Witness), who claim that Spurs' north London rivals are planning to hijack the Whites' move for the Bologna FC 1909 defender, for whom Fabio Paratici was recently reported to have made a second offer of €23m (£19.5m) for.
However, according to the latest reports from Italy, Arsenal are upping the ante in their own pursuit of the Japan international, with Il Resto del Carlino claiming that the Gunners are being aggressive in their bid to steal the 22-year-old from Tottenham's clutches.
Fans will be furious
With it appearing for a while that Spurs were very much the front runners in the race to sign Tomiyasu this summer, should the club eventually miss out on the defender, especially to their most bitter rivals, the Tottenham Hotspur faithful will be rightly furious.
Having said that, it is easy to see why Mikel Arteta's side are keen on a move for the youngster, as he highly impressed in Serie A last season.
In 202021, the £13k-per-week man helped his side keep four clean sheets over his 31 appearances in the Italian top flight, in addition to making an average of 1.7 interceptions, 1.5 tackles, 3.3 clearances and winning 5.4 duels per fixture.
The £18m-rated centre-back also chipped in for his side going forwards, bagging two goals, as well as taking an average of 0.5 shots and making 0.3 key passes per league game.
These returns saw the man Mitchell Dijks dubbed a "very strong" player earn an average SofaScore match rating of 6.86, ranking him as Sinisa Mihajlovic's joint eighth-best performer in Serie A last season.
As such, the addition of Tomiyasu would appear to be a very astute piece of business for Spurs to get over the line this summer, however, with Arsenal also very much in the race for the Japanese gem, Paratici looks to have his work cut out in closing the deal.
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