All of which he could have achieved behind closed doors. There was no need to go public.
That he went public, suggests to me, he was fishing for interest.
Which has so far been conspicuous by its absence.
I think he expected clubs to be very keen on signing him, and I think he has rather badly miscalculated that. And, to top it off, he seems to be the catalyst for unrest within the squad.
It’s absolutely mental, amateur, and I would venture a guess that this is why Levy has fallen out with the agent. There is clearly a well defined playbook that clubs and players use to pressure the selling club in the media, and either get the price they want or increase the willingness to sell, but it is surely used when both sides are agreed on the plan. When Modric wanted to go to Chelsea, you can be pretty sure that Chelsea had already indicated they obviously wanted to push for him. Ditto Bale and Madrid.
Eriksen having done this with no sincere interest forthcoming is pretty embarrassing. Maybe that’s why Toby is back in Poch’s good books - through everything he has kept professional, worked hard and even though he could well be running his contract down in the same way, he hasn’t let it affect him and he hasn’t gone public with anything despite spending half the season out of the team with his own contract dispute.
I would also say, Eriksen’s way of doing it, ‘it wouldn’t be the worst thing to stay at Tottenham’ is so half arsed and again, amateur. If you’ve got no intention of staying, let the club plan without you and make your move - as long as you have interest in your services. Don’t just release a quote without any interest in the hope of drumming it up, and paint Spurs as the second choice. Be the villain, let us paint you as the villain and get your move. And we can move on.
He did it with good intentions but it’s been received completely the wrong way because he had no interest in him. If a club thought he was that good, they’d jump at the chance to get him for 40/50M or whatever it is and get another season out of him because of how much value he would bring to the team. But he isn’t that and he’s going to be viewed as a punt.
I think we need a new bomb squad. Or we need Poch to change how he manages, which may be possible. Fergie’s authority was absolute at United and once you crossed him you were out. We can now pay proper wages but maybe we can also afford to let people rot or go out on loan and pay their wages for the sake of unity. We absolutely can’t have this continuing cloud hanging over the club with players treating it as a stepping stone and a manager not wanting to deal with them.