Spurs willing to spend

NASHVILLE. — Mauricio Pochettino has dismissed the suggestion that Tottenham Hotspur’s chairman Daniel Levy is restricting the club’s spending and explained the difficulty of signing players, claiming several transfer targets, including Chelsea’s Alvaro Morata, have been reluctant to compete for a first-team place. New Chelsea striker Morata turned down a move to Tottenham Hotspur because he feared the competition from striker Harry Kane, Spurs manager Pochettino has claimed

Meanwhile, Levy questioned the “totally unsustainable” spending of Spurs’ English Premier League soccer rivals last week, and it is often perceived that he prevents his managers from spending.

Pochettino’s predecessors Harry Redknapp and Andre Villas-Boas complained that Levy did not back them in the transfer market but the tables seem to have turned, and club sources have told ESPN that Pochettino rejected the deals for Porto’s Ricardo Pereira and Juan Foyth of Estudiantes because he felt they were too expensive.

Spurs are the only English Premier League club yet to make a summer signing but when told that many outsiders blame Levy, but ahead of the friendly with Juventus at Wembley on Saturday, Pochettino said: “That is a very wrong perception.” — ESPN.