Sources: Tottenham in advanced talks to agree deal with Aston Villa’s Rob MacKenzie
According to insiders, Tottenham is in advanced negotiations to entice Rob MacKenzie, the head of recruitment at Aston Villa.
The Premier League leaders are negotiating a contract extension to bring MacKenzie back to the team, where he was employed for eighteen months between 2015 and 2016.
Following the announcement on October 9th that Johan Lange was moving from the Midlands giants as their technical director, Tottenham has set its sights on the Villa head of recruitment.
The Dane is scheduled to start working for Spurs on Wednesday. He will be in charge of talent spotting, analytics, and recruitment for both the senior and academy sides of the organization.
Lange and MacKenzie, who has been head of recruitment at Villa since August 2020, are eager to work together again at Tottenham.
After establishing himself as Tottenham’s head of player identification—a position that entailed recommending scouting prospects to the club’s transfer team—he has had senior recruitment positions at Derby County and Belgian club OH Leuven.
After Monchi assumed the position of president of football operations at Villa in the summer, thereby placing the Spaniard in charge of first-team recruitment, Lange was gradually forced out of the team.
For the three years that Lange led the Villa, NSWE, the club’s owners, had expressed concerns about his transfer history.
For large sums of money, he was in charge of signing failures like Bertrand Traore, Morgan Sanson, and Leon Bailey; he was also in charge of signing more prosperous athletes like Ollie Watkins and Matty Cash.
Lange was Villa’s worldwide director of football development starting in June 2023. Prior to that, he was the sporting director starting in 2020.
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