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Willian of Shakhtar Donetsk. (Photo by Claudio Villa/Getty Images)
London Calling

Transfer talk: Villas-Boas plays down Willian link

“He is an extremely good player but we have to respect what we are doing and the talent we have in our squad,” AVB said yesterday.

ANDRE VILLAS-BOAS has played down speculation linking Tottenham with a move to sign Shakhtar Donetsk attacker Willian.

Spurs had a bid for the Brazil international rejected over the summer but Villas-Boas believes that the club may not need to make any new signings, with a host of injured players set to return to action over the coming weeks.

“He is an extremely good player but we have to respect what we are doing and the talent we have in our squad and, to be fair to you, I have not thought about January,” Villas-Boas told Sky Sports News.

“We have scouts all over the world gathering information but we have not studied January as we have so many players coming back from injury and I think they will be the main players coming in.”

Villas-Boas was heavily linked with the Brazil international during his spell in charge of Chelsea and the 24-year-old recently revealed that the pair remain in regular contact. The Ukrainian club’s director of strategy Joseph Palmer conceded that communication with rival teams in this way is regular practise in the game.

“It can be a little unsettling but I think it goes on a lot in football when another team is after a player, they always find ways to get messages through and that is football and I don’t read too much into that,” he said. ”For us to continue to progress we need to hold onto our best players through the January window and I suspect we will but if we perform well in the Champions League we are bound to attract interest.”

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