Pochettino plays down January move for Aston Villa star Grealish

Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has poured cold water on suggestions he will rekindle his interest in Aston Villa star Jack Grealish in January.

Grealish was heavily linked with a move to Tottenham in the summer but Pochettino’s side refused to match Villa’s valuation.

Tottenham didn’t sign a single player in the summer but there were suggestions they would reignite their pursuit of Grealish in the January transfer window.

Grealish signed a new five-year Villa deal at the end of September but there were reports suggesting it contains a £30m release clause to allow him to secure a Premier League move.

The 23-year-old is widely regarded as one of the best players in the Championship but Pochettino insists there is no room in his squad for the youngster unless players leave next month.

“Look, I think there were plenty of players linked with Tottenham, not only last summer but in the previous season” Goal quote Pochettino as saying on Friday.

“You know it’s difficult to talk about rumours, about names. We’ll see what happens in January. We have a full squad, we have 28 in the squad. It’s impossible to sign players if we don’t have space. We have more look what happened in the Champions League with Juan Foyth, Nkoudou and Vincent Janssen.

“We don’t have enough space at the moment. I think it makes no sense now to talk about signing players.”

Grealish has played a direct hand in six goals in 21 league games this season. Impressively, despite being an attacking midfielder, only two players (10+ starts) have a better pass success rate than Grealish in the Championship this term (87.7%).