Tottenham Hotspurs chased Andrei Arshavin all summer in an on again, off again transfer saga. Th edeal never went through, and they ended up signing fellow Russian Roman Pavlyuchenko. However, after an awful start to the season, it looks like Spurs are back in and confident they will land the 27 year old Arshavin for £15million in the January transfer window. I hope they do just so this ongoing drama can come to an end.

Looks like Juande Ramos is set to go on a major buying spree. It appears as if the Spurs boss is going to splash out £60million large on David Villa, Andrei Arshavin (please let this one be over soon) and Manchester City’s Vedran Corluk. With £20million already in from the sale of Robbie Keane, look for Ramos to unload Dimitar Berbatov (to Man Utd possibly) to help finance the deal for David Villa. Couple these deals with the players that Ramos has already brought in (Luka Modric and Giovani dos Santos), and those he has let leave (Defoe, Paul Robinson, Keane) and it is clear that Senor Ramos is re-building Spurs to his liking. If all this goes down, do Spurs become the best team in North London?

[Via Soccernet]

With Spurs looking like they will be selling Robbie Keane, Dimitar Berbatov and Darren Bent, their main transfer targets have become the Russian pair of Andrei Arshavin and Roman Pavlyuchenko. According to The Independent, Spartak Moscow want £15-20m for Pavlyuchenko and Zenit St. Petersburg has said Spurs are prepared to offer £15.9m for Arshavin.

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UPDATE -  Zenit has rejected Barcelona’s second offer, 15 Million Euros for Arshavin.

Dutchman and Zenit St. Petersburg coach Dick Advocaat has come to terms with losing 27 year old Russian National Team star Andrei Arshavin to a big name European club.

So much so that Advocaat has told Arshavin (who’s scored 13 times in 37 appearances for Russia) that he isn’t required to train with the 2008 Uefa Cup Champions as both club and player are expected to have something sorted very soon.

“Andrei hopes to play elsewhere in Europe and something will happen this week,” he said. “He is a good player and would do well in any league in Europe but my advice to him is that it’s up to him where he goes.

“He has to do what he wants, he is the man who will be playing. It is disappointing that he is leaving but that’s the way it goes.”

Even though Arshavin scored two goals (against Sweden and Holland) at Euro 2008, I’m just wondering if his struggles against Spain in the Semi-Finals are having any effect on the big clubs decisions to drop the money Zenit is looking to collect.

image via SportReport