football.london understands that James Maddison is set to undergo a medical ahead of a proposed transfer to Tottenham. The 26-year-old midfielder has been heavily linked with a move to Spurs following the relegation of Leicester City from the Premier League.
Maddison, who's expected to cost the north Londoners £40million this summer, featured 30 times for the Foxes in the English top-flight last term, recording ten goals and nine assists. Despite his impressive performances for the East Midlands side, he couldn't steer them clear of the drop zone.
Tottenham have been in the market for a new attacking midfielder for a while now, with Christian Eriksen previously setting the precedent. Since leaving for Inter Milan in January 2020, Spurs tried to replace the Denmark international with Giovanni Lo Celso to little success.
Aside from the Argentine, who has spent much of his time at the club on loan at Villarreal, Tottenham haven't signed somebody of a similar profile to Eriksen, and – instead – they've looked to bolster other areas of the pitch. But, now, with Ange Postecoglou in the dugout and eager to implement an exciting brand of football, Maddison looks set to catalyse a new era at the club.
In an interview with Australian media during his final season at Celtic, the newly-appointed Tottenham boss explained exactly how he adapts his teams to face opponents and the importance of a number ten to his philosophy. Postecoglou said: "It's always for me how the football I want us to play, how is it affected by what the opposition want to do. It's not about changing our approach.
"It's about what are they going to do to try to stop us? What are the potential weaknesses in them that we can use in our game model to exploit that?
"So you're always well prepared and the players are well versed in their strengths and weaknesses but it's always around the notion that we're still going to play this style of football, try to dominate in these areas and we're going to do that by addressing it in this way.
READ MORE: Harry Kane faces Chelsea and Bayern Munich transfer headache after £60m Tottenham bid rejected
"It's a bit of both [tweaking personnel and knowing their threats]. There have been some constants in my career over the last 25 years, some things I really believe in that are unshakeable in my beliefs.
"I like my team to have the ball, I want us to be aggressive in everything we do. I want us to play in the opposition half. I don't want us to be passive at any stage.
"Those are the fundamentals but within that you find that as you go along you get challenged by unbelievable teams with great qualities and their own sort of way of playing and you need adjustments. The way I've done it in how I've set up the game model now and how it's evolved, if you look at our team now I've got four to five wingers and they're all wingers but they've all got different qualities.
"Some have speed, some are better on the dribble, others are just great at getting on the end of things so depending on who we play it's then about team selection. It's the same with the midfield dynamic. Do I need two more dynamic midfield players? Do I need two tens? Do I need an eight and a ten? I've tried to build teams where we'll play our 4-3-3 but that can look so different depending on the 11 I put out there.
"That way we don't have to change too many fundamentals in terms of our approach but having those players will mean that we change, it tweaks us just naturally."
