Tottenham Hotspur recently bid farewell to one of the club’s longest-serving players.
Earlier this month, Eric Dier completed a loan move to the Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich for a transfer fee that could go up to £3 million.
The German club signed a six-month contract with the provision for a one-year extension.
However, former Bayern midfielder Lothar Matthaus has expressed discontent with the transfer and has criticised his club for their current transfer strategy.
The 30-year-old defender joined Tottenham during Mauricio Pochettino’s tenure in the summer of 2014, sealing a £4 million deal from Sporting Lisbon. Dier went on to have a successful career with the Lilywhites, amassing an impressive 363 appearances for the club.
However, this season proved to be disappointing for him under Ange Postecoglou, as he has only been featured in four games. The Australian manager effectively excluded him from the pecking order.
Even amid the injury crisis, Postecoglou chose full-backs Emerson Royal and Ben Davies to fill the centre-back position instead of Dier.
Having no prospects for future playing time, Dier departed North London and joined Bayern.
However, Lothar Matthaus slammed his former club’s ambition regarding Dier.
Matthaus told the Sky 90 podcast (via The Mirror):
“Bayern need more depth and reinforcements, but are these players reinforcements? Eric Dier wasn’t necessarily a key player at Tottenham recently. I remember Uli Hoeness (Bayern’s honorary president) once saying, ‘We won’t be bringing in any more players who are sitting on the bench at other clubs’. The latest transfer looks different.”
“Kieran Trippier would be a similar case. That’s not Bayern Munich for me. Bayern should focus on reinforcements or on the young players. Aleksander Pavlovic sat out against Bremen and wasn’t substituted. When he did play, he was always outstanding.
“Bayern Munich have very good youth players and Christoph Freund (Bayern’s sporting director) is responsible for that.
He has a good network. In the summer it was said, ‘We can let (Benjamin) Pavard and (Josip) Stanisic go and get someone else instead’, and then they didn’t get anyone else.
“As a result, they’ve got problems at right-back and in the centre. They thought, ‘We’ll manage that’. No, they reacted too late. The team can’t find itself.”
Although the England International has seen more time on the bench this season for the Lillywhites, he is still a pretty decent player who can find his form back in the Bundesliga.
He is not the only Spurs player to join Bayern Munich recently. The club’s all-time leading goalscorer, Harry Kane, also made the move to the Bavarians last summer, securing a record-breaking transfer fee in the league’s history.
And he has been incredible since joining, scoring 22 goals in 17 league games so far.
