Graham Roberts believes that Tottenham Hotspur can afford to sign Lautaro Martinez from Inter Milan without selling Harry Kane.
The club have been active in the transfer window this summer and have secured the signings of Pierluigi Gollini and Cristian Romero from Atalanta, with both players arriving initially on loan, while they have also signed Bryan Gil from Sevilla in a deal that saw Erik Lamela move to Spain in exchange, along with £21.6m.
Spurs have been linked with a potential swoop to sign Martinez, with the club said to have agreed a fee to bring him in, although the brakes have been put on the deal after Romelu Lukaku was sold to Chelsea.
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Roberts believes that Spurs still have money to spend this summer because of the way they have structured the deals to sign Gollini, Gil, and Romero.
And he thinks that a deal to sign £72m-rated Martinez – who has scored 49 goals and laid on 20 assists in 132 appearances – could be achievable for the club before the transfer deadline.
He told This Is Futbol: “I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and he was saying, ‘we can’t buy him, the only way we can buy him is if we sell Kane’ and I said, ‘well, we haven’t paid for the centre-half because he’s on loan.’
“We haven’t spent any money at the moment. We’ve got the goalkeeper on loan until next season. They’ve done a swap deal with Lamela, so we’ve spent £25m (on Gil).”