Brentford boss Thomas Frank says Christian Eriksen’s future will be decided at the end of the season.
Eriksen’s short-term contract expires at the end of the current campaign and his performances for the Bees in recent weeks will have attracted the attention of some of Europe’s biggest clubs.
Tottenham Hotspur will be one of those and the Dane showed his former club what they were missing as he was the most creative player on the pitch in a 0-0 draw on Saturday evening which was a big blow to the Champions League hopes of Spurs.
Frank is desperate for Eriksen to remain in west London but says a decision will be made when this campaign is over.
“I would love to say that I am confident, I am very positive and very hopeful that he will stay but it will be a decision at the end of the season,” he said.
“I will do what I can but it’s down to Christian, where it’s like everything if you decide to go to one club or another, you buy that house or another house, you take that job or another job.
“There must be pros and cons and I always say if you make it an eight-two decision, where you have eight pros and two cons, then you are in a good position.
“I hope Christian makes the right choice for him and his family and I really hope it will be us.”
Spurs would have loved Eriksen in their side at the Brentford Community Stadium as they were devoid of all attacking creativity and went through a second successive game without registering a shot on target.
The Denmark international, whose recovery from a cardiac arrest last summer has been miraculous, created both of Brentford’s best chances as Ivan Toney twice hit the woodwork from set-piece deliveries.
Spurs boss Antonio Conte, who has previously said he would be open to working with Eriksen again having been together at Inter Milan, chose not to discuss the possibility of a summer move.
“First of all, I was pleased to see Christian play and to play in this way,” Conte said. “You know very well to speak now about the transfer market about players that are not in my team, I think it’s a lack of respect for the team that the player is playing for and also for my players.
“For sure I worked with him two years at Inter Milan and I enjoyed this. I am very happy to see him in this fantastic form because don’t forget only eight months ago what happened. Now I am pleased to see Christian play football in this type of level.”
Having scored 12 goals in their previous three matches, Spurs have now failed to have a shot on target in successive games and Conte says this is a result of their free-scoring nature.
“I think that in the last two games we’ve struggled offensively because we’ve found two teams that are very good defensively,” he said.
“Without the ball these two teams defended very deep, with the whole team, with all their players.
“When you find this type of situation you need to create the space, also to have players to beat their man in one vs one, to create the superiority.
“I think this aspect we are working on – this week, after the game against Brighton, we worked on this aspect to try to in training find 10 players behind the ball.
“In the end I think this is a consequence when you score many goals, you start to become a dangerous team and the opponent pays more attention. They try to have more balance when they face you.
“I think today we wanted to get three points but the draw was fair and we have to accept this result and to try to continue to work and improve in the situations we can improve.”
Frank said of his side’s display: “We got a result but we should have got an even bigger result. We should have won, I think we deserved to win the game.”
