AZ Alkmaar have thrown Tottenham’s move for Vincent Janssen into doubt after their sporting director revealed they have yet to receive an improved bid for the Holland striker.
The 22-year-old, who finished as the top scorer in the Dutch league last season with 27 goals in 32 appearances, was the subject of a bid worth €18m (£16.5m) from Spurs last month, which was rejected. That led Janssen to voice his frustration at their stance, with AZ believed to be holding out for a fee of €20m – reportedly on the advice of the subject of Michael Lewis’s best-selling book Moneyball, Billy Beane, who was hired as an adviser in March last year.
However, the club’s sporting director Max Huiberts has denied that Tottenham have submitted a new offer and warned they will have to pay their asking price if they want to sign Janssen.
“There is a lot of speculation and I read a lot of nonsense stories,” he told the Dutch newspaper Noordhollands Dagblad.
“We received one bid from Tottenham Hotspur that we have not accepted. That’s not so strange to me. It is not often that a club agrees immediately with a first offer. Then we heard nothing more.”
Asked whether he would be making contact with Tottenham, Huiberts added: “No, that’s not us. If you want to buy something, you have to go to the store. The store does not belong to you.”
• This article was amended on 7 July 2016. An earlier version said that Billy Beane was the author of Moneyball. This has been corrected to say that Beane was the subject of Michael Lewis’s book.
