West Bromwich Albion Chairman has spoken of his displeasure with Tottenham Hotspur and it sounds a little familiar to Saints fans.
West Bromwich Albion seem to have been in a similar position to Saints these past few weeks in that they have a player that Tottenham Hotspur covet, but the North London club won't or can't pay the going rate so resort to other tactics.
Baggies Chairman Jeremy Peace is enraged about what has gone on and feels so strongly about it he has issued an official club statement.
Peace revealed that the final day of transfer business did not pass without Tottenham making two further attempts to sign Albion’s top scorer from the 2014-15 campaign, Saido Berahino.
The striker has been the subject of two previous rejected bids from Albion’s Premier League rivals. Tottenham’s third and fourth attempts met the same fate today.
Peace said in that statement.
"We have a key player who has been very unsettled by antics which were designed to get him out of our club cheaply.
"Those tactics have continued despite my making our position clear in my first conversation with Daniel Levy on this subject in mid-August.
"I said selling Saido so late in the window was not on our agenda.
"Tottenham’s offers failed substantially to reflect Saido’s true value while the timing made no allowance for our own recruitment of a suitable replacement for a proven Premier League goalscorer.
"Saido has been unsettled to the point where our Head Coach has not felt able to select him for our last three games.
"We are now left with the task of repairing the damage created by this unfortunate episode.”
So Saints supporters who felt that they might be getting paranoid about the way that Victor Wanyama was headhunted by Tottenham can feel a little better this evening in knowing that Saints are not alone in the way that they have been treated by a club that was described by ex Saints Chairman Rupert Lowe 14 years ago as North London Yobbos, that was in a similar situation after Spurs has co erced then Saints boss Glenn Hoddle into jumping ship and then came back to persuade Dean Richards to do the same.
What it needs now is clubs like West Brom and Saints to stand up and demand that the big clubs and the delusional big clubs such as Spurs stop their bullying tactics in transfer windows.
By all means they are entitled to buy players, but they should do so with reasonable offers at the going rate, even as West Brom were making their statement Matt Le Tissier was saying on Sky that Spurs had made offers for Wanyama of less than Saints had paid Celtic for the player two years ago, if that is not conclusive proof then I don't know what is.
Thankfully both West Brom and Saints have prized assets still at their club tonight, sadly for both they now face a difficult task to re assimilate unsettled players back into their respective squads.
Spurs fans are not happy either, although there are of course some who see their club as above Saints or West Brom, many are appalled by their clubs behaviour and see it as a major reason why Spurs have failed to land key targets this summer.