Tottenham gazump Everton and land Moussa Sissoko for £30m

Moussa Sissoko became a £30m Tottenham Hotspur player late on
Wednesday night after Newcastle United's long game of brinksmanship
concluded with an audacious hijacking of Everton's bid to sign the
France midfielder.
On Tuesday evening Newcastle believed that, with Mike Ashley, the
club's owner, holding out for at least £30m, Sissoko would be going
nowhere but 24 hours later the player had signed a five-year contract at
White Hart Lane.
It left Everton, who, after meeting the
asking price, believed a deal was all but
rubber-stamped, furious and Rafael
Benítez's Championship side holding a
£31m profit from a transfer window in
which they signed 12 players.
Although Benítez would ideally have retained the 27-year-old former
Toulouse midfielder, who cost Newcastle only £1.8m, to bolster his
team's attempt to win promotion back to the Premier League at the first
attempt, he accepted Sissoko did not want to play second-tier football.
A price of £35m was set for a midfielder who sometimes underperformed
as Newcastle were relegated but impressed for France at Euro 2016.
Although Real Madrid, Internazionale, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund,
Spurs, Everton, Crystal Palace and West Bromwich expressed interest, no
one offered more than £15m until Wednesday.
Even then, Spurs initially only raised their bid marginally, to £16m and
then £18m. On international duty with France, Sissoko had been given
permission to leave Clairefontaine to fly to London at 9am but as the
hours passed and the impasse continued it seemed he would be going
nowhere after all.
Then, as afternoon turned to evening,
Everton dramatically upped their offer,
meeting the £30m valuation. A medical was
booked and a private jet hired to transport
the midfielder to Merseyside only for
consternation to be provoked at Goodison
Park when Sissoko, who had always hankered after Champions League
football, failed to board the flight.
Jolted into action by the realisation that Newcastle had failed to blink
first and they were in real danger of missing out on a key transfer target,
Spurs equalled Everton's offer. All that remained was for the midfielder
to inform the latter club he would not be joining them after all, pass a
medical and, on the brink of 11pm, pose for pictures in a Tottenham
shirt.