If there’s one single player currently at Tottenham Hotspur that fans would like to see extend their stay in north London, it’s Christian Eriksen. Harry Kane may be the superstar, but Eriksen is close behind, and is without hyperbole the engine that makes Mauricio Pochettino’s offense run.

The good news is according to Dan Kilpatrick in the Standard there’s a new contract offer on the table. The bad news is that Eriksen appears to be in no hurry to sign it.

Kilpatrick writes that Spurs are getting a mite anxious about Eriksen’s stalling on signing a new deal, as he has only 18 months left on his existing contract. If that new contract remains unsigned this summer, it means Spurs are probably going to have to consider selling him before he enters the final year of his contract. That’s bad news, and while Spurs would undoubtedly get a metric crap-ton of money (that is a technical term) for him, it would also represent the first crack in the team unity that Pochettino has crafted since his arrival at Spurs.

Eriksen is currently at £75k/week and while Kilpatrick doesn’t state what the new offer is he hypothesizes that it would take him up to or around Dele Alli’s new £150k/week deal. That’s good money, but nowhere near what a club like Barcelona or Madrid could offer him, and both are rumored to be interested.

However, there are a limited number of clubs that can afford a transfer fee for Eriksen and pay his desired wages, and if those clubs decide not to bite for whatever reason it’s likely Eriksen would re-sign with Spurs. That’s probably what this all means — Eriksen is waiting to see if a club like Madrid or Barca are serious about buying — and paying — him. It’s the brass ring and you can’t fault him for seeing if it swings close enough to grab, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t stay in London, where he is reportedly happy.

Kilpatrick also notes that Spurs are going to try to offload a number of players in this month’s transfer window, including Vincent Janssen, Mousa Dembele, Victor Wanyama, Georges-Kevin N’Koudou, and Fernando Llorente. Selling some of their dead wood might free up funds and roster space for another signing, but let’s not get our hopes up about that quite yet, we’ve seen that movie before.