The Pierre Emile Hobjerg transfer saga looks to be heading to a finale this week with reports that the player will have a medical with Spurs with news that the two clubs have reached an agreement, but the reality is the details of that might never be revealed.
Spurs fans have been all over the internet over the past few months, seemingly feeling that they are going to be getting the new messiah with the dichotomy being that on one hand their club were claiming that he was the number one transfer target for Jose Mourinho and on the other Daniel Levy rating him so low in value that it wasn't far off Saints actually paying to let him go.
I may be only half joking here, the players agent is Mourhino's close friend Pini Zahavi a man no stranger to controversy and allegations of transfer tap ups with an odd number of his deals seemingly done with friends like Jose Mourinho whom he became close to at Chelsea.
Zahavi is an agent that does not work cheaply and someone will be paying him a cut of this transfer, that someone in 2010 was Portsmouth who owed him over £2 million when they went bust in that year.
Zahavi, together with his partner, assisted with the sale of Portsmouth to Alexandre Gaydamak in 2006 Earlier in his career, Zahavi had assisted with the sale of Beitar Jerusalem to Gaydamak's father, the Russian—Israeli businessman Arkady Gaydamak.
Zahavi worked on a number of deals for Portsmouth's new regime, bringing Avram Grant to the club, and signing a two-year scouting contract worth £800,000, and being involved in signing and selling a number of players.
When Portsmouth went into administration after multiple changes of owner in February 2010, Zahavi was among the 24 agents to whom the club owed almost £9 million. His own share of the outstanding amount totalled £2.074 million.
So this transfer was never going to be easy as Zahavi will want paying and want paying big, this is where the deal could become complicated in that who will pay him, Spurs as the buying club or Saints as the seller.
It seems that it could be Spurs given how low they are driving the price and how confident they have always been of signing the player and using that as leverage.
The moment Hojbjerg changed his agent to Zahavi back in January the Saints hierarchy new that the player was going to be off somewhere, it was only a question of where.
Let's be blunt, six months ago few people outside of Saints supporters would have known much about the Dane, most Spurs fans would have been hard ushed to recognise him in the street, yet suddenly he is Spurs number one transfer target and in they eyes of Spurs fans the missing link, why ? because the media is telling them so.
Prior to January the Hojbjerg story was one of an average Premier League player who at times had struggled to play regularly, as recently as 2017/18 he was completely ignored by Manuel Pellegrino and started only 19 games that season, the previous season, his first at the club he started 14.
2018/19 saw him come to the fore, but he was seen as a steady player rather than a game changer, most thought his passing and shooting skills let him down.
Last December his new contract at St Mary's looked a formality , as Saints surged up the table the signs were good "let's get it done" he tweeted when the matter was mentioned on Twitter.
But it all changed when he changed his agent and since then Saints knew that they were going to have to fight tooth and nail not to keep the player but get a reasonable fee for him, after all four years after he arrived at the club for £12 million he was now an established player at both Premier League and International level, that was worth more than a £12 million increase.
When £35 million was quoted no Saints supporter expected that, even £25 million was seen as bite your hand off time, but it wasn't as low as £15 million.
Most Saints fans would feel that £20 million is a good and fair price and let's be honest he is Jose Mourinho's number one target so that must be worth something.
Now it seems that a price has been agreed and I would suspect that it will have increased slightly from the £15 million quoted, the money on the nail will now perhaps be between £15-19 million and then after that add ons will push up the final price, should the conditions of the contract be met.
I would hazard a guess that we will get about £17 million plus add one bringing the full price to around £22 million should Hojbjerg meet several criteria, normally a set number of games played as well as perhaps a trophy won.
But we will never find out the exact number, both clubs will want to be coy, Daniel Levy at Spurs will want it to look as if he has got a bargain and Saints will want to make it look like they have driven a hard bargain.
But then there is Pini Zahavi and who will pay his fee ?