Luka Modric Not In Tottenham Hotspur Squad To Face Manchester United

Luka Modric will miss the first game of Totenham Hotspur's season after Spur boss Harry Redknapp dropped him from the squad that will travel north to face Manchester United on Monday. The Croatian midfielder, whose wishes for a move to Stamford Bridge are by this point well-established, also missed Spurs' UEFA Cup qualifier against Hearts, which his team won 5-0 in his absence. That was explained away with an injury, but nobody really bought that one, and this time Redknapp is admitting that that's not the sole cause for his exclusion:

[Luka Modric has] got a little bit of an injury. There's a possibility he could have played through it. But at the moment his head's not in the right place [to face United].

-Harry Redknap. Source: Daily Mail.

Chelsea will have had two aims in this pursuit - the first, and obviously most important, would have been to acquire a very good player for a fair price. The second would have been to destablise one of their rivals for a Champions League spot - disrupting Tottenham can only be a good thing for Chelsea, even if they take dubiously ethical (i.e. unethical) means to get there.

Anyway, this obviously means that the Modric Question is still up in the air - as if we didn't need more confirmation of that following the comments from Spurs sources earlier today.