Before we begin wading into the rights and wrongs of Spurs’ transfer business, it’s always worth a peek at the past for some historical perspective, which has to be especially pertinent when discussing the lesser of the two transfer windows.
Tottenham has rarely spent heavily in January, and if we look over the past decade, we get quite a picture of ENIC Brand shopping. In the 2010/11 season, Spurs brought in Bongani Khumalo and Steven Pienaar.
2011/12 saw Louis Saha and Ryan Nelson arrive at The Lane.
2012/13 Spurs brought in Zeki Fryers and Lewis Holtby.
Dele Alli landed in 2014/15.
Fast-forward to 2017/18, for the next incomer, who was Lucas Moura.
2019/20 saw Gedson Fernandes and Steven Bergwijn arrive in N17.
Any seasons, not listed, were one where the chequebook stayed under lock and key.
Above, we see a summary that shows that Tottenham hasn’t tended to do much business in the winter and that Conte himself has hardly been a prolific shopper at other clubs. In this window, Spurs brought in Dejan Kulusevski on loan from Juventus, whose loan is costing €10million.
Should certain targets be hit, the option to sign the player permanently is €35million.
Rordrigo Bentancur also arrived from Juventus, for a reported £15.8million.
Therefore, if we add the total amount payable of our January activity, we get €60.8million. Only the value is better than the total because if Kulu doesn’t work out, we can return him.
€60.8million beats Antonio Conte’s biggest winter spend, which was whilst he was at Chelsea.
Furthermore, Levy bit the bullet and moved on the deadwood, that many fans had been crying out for. Jack Clarke went to Sunderland on loan, Tanguy Ndombele was returned to Lyon on loan, Bryan Gil was loaned to Valencia, Giovani Lo Celso was loaned to Villarreal and Dele Alli is now an Everton, player.
Sure, Levy could’ve spent £300million, but that wouldn’t have been a reasonable expectation, nor would have correcting all his past mistakes in one January window…
I hope you’re right and they’re both brilliant, I just didn’t see any other clubs hoovering them up at their modest fees. Villa I think showed interest in the Uruguayan boy, so I’m sure he’s decent. The jury is still massively out on Paratici for me…
Oh he seems like a dick-head, nothing new there with a proportion of footballers.
However, he insulted Kane yet we still spoke to him and tried to get him in knowing all of that stuff. Sorry, the club have embarrassed themselves yet again, not the player’s fault.
He was asking for a 100k a week was he? Really…
Do you think he’d have come to us if we paid him more than Liverpool? I reckon he would have.
Money talks though, they probably paid him more…
[…] Excellent Transfer Business From Levy And Reasonably He Couldn’t Have Done Better [opinion] – Harry Hotspur […]
Juve consistantly win Serie A and are in the champs league. They pay huge amounts of wages and are a global force in football with fans around the world. We are lucky to get 2 players from them who 2-4 years ago were the most wanted footballers in Europe. Maybe 1 of the 2 is a benchwarmer. The DM was in the starting 11 for a very long time and still managed over 20 games this season as a starting player
I tried to stay out of the click bait nonsense of the window but got drawn in by Traore. I am not overly concerned we didn’t get him, I just like watching him play because no one has a clue what he is going to do. One thing is for sure he would have caused me to buy a dog just so I could kick it! For every moment of excitement he has 36 terrible actions. I couldn’t cope and am glad he went to Barcelona.
I largely agree with HH, so glad a great deal of the deadwood has gone. So disappointed in Lo Celso, he should have been so much better. He could keep the ball, had a bit of nastiness about him, but was in the end too weak (I could shoot harder than him) and too soft. It is certainly bad when Darren Anderton outplayed him!
When Conte arrived I wanted him to give us a shake, he has done exactly that. Knowing Levy I expected the Loan system to be used for ins and outs and that has materialised also. I don’t mind Paratici going to Juve for 2 players, stick to what you know hey?
What I am worried about is we are (miraculously) in with a shout of top 4. Are Kulukulushaker and Darren Bentancur going to be the difference between 6th and 4th? Time will tell, but our midfield have been lacking this season and it was obvious from the Chelsea Trilogy (I preferred The Godfather) that we were lacking in that area, so whether we needed this that and the other Conte knew the midfield could not be fixed by tactics alone. Conte has mediocre defenders working better and Kane looked like he wanted to play again.
I think if we were sitting 12th after the calamitous Nuno experiment I might be looking more optimistic, but it is the fact 4th is within reach. It isn’t a trophy but I rather looked forward to Real, Inter, AC, Barca, Munich et al coming to us as opposed to the mighty Slovenians.
This Summer will be interesting (if this wind doesn’t blow it away). We have effectively shown this season that we can survive and notionally compete without Kane. If he left and the money was invested properly, I think under Conte we might be a far more credible challenger for 4th. If Kane stays he surely cannot be as poor in front of goal as this season, therefore with 3 quality acquisitions we will certainly be heading in the right direction.
I most certainly do not think this is a bad transfer window, I am just eager to see what Conte does without the distractions of those who shall not be named and the introduction of 2 lads who I have seen glimpses of but not really paid attention to. Over to Conte to earn his corn.
When we say we’ve got rid of deadwood in NBelly and GLC, we should be very prepared for them to be back next year. There isn’t a hope in hell that OL pay 50-odd million option for the former and GLC is just sh1te and will likely not be snapped up by any Levy-like mug of a chairman.
There was no debacle with Diaz.he chose liverpool over us. Simple as that. We dont offer high wages nor we offer champs league.he gets both at liverpool
Agree with you. Diaz was always choosing liverpool before us.liverpool were linked with him for a very long time
Physically men v boys.
Seconded.
The squad had to evolve….it stagnated for far too long. Finally the chairman is listening to the coach.
If he had done this after Champions league final defeat with Poch we wouldn’t be in this dire mess.
Yes the squad is smaller, but I’m hoping all the remaining members will sing from the same songsheet and pull in the same direction.
I genuinely believe Conte has got rid of the negative trouble makers
It is not simply down to ability I have to say, because with the exception of Gil who is simply not a PL player, it is the lack of professionalism in the players you mention that is the root cause to their problems and the reason why they failed here.
IF they had the professional qualities of a Ben Davies as an example, they like him would have been here long term and still offering something to the team, which should not be taken so lightly imo.
Agreed. The culture of the club also needs to change. Not just the personnel. This comes from the top. Poch was able to build a competitive team and improve the culture of the club until he was hamstrung by Levy. Conte can absolutely build a winning mentality and hopefully with a smaller squad he can improve our league position.
4th place will be a massive success.
Levy knew full well that Pool would come in and get him. It was all a PR exercise imo. Smoke and mirrors, one thing that Levy excels at.
Also a big lad and good in the air too which means if clearances are made from keeper/defence, there are now 3 to aim at as Kulu is also a big lad along with of course Kane. We’ve been short in that dept. for too long.
Either AM or right sided attacker. So much needed – in the former to bring some creativity to front midfield, in the latter to attack down the right so that Royal and Doherty can stay back more where they are more effective. Though I believe he is more of the inverted type of RW.
You could say our midfield was weaker than our defence, that’s how I saw it.
From a pure footballing perspective it’s difficult to see this window as an unqualified success. The squad is smaller. On the face of it the outgoings are far more interesting than the incomings. IMHO the outgoings are for non-footballing reasons but nevertheless important for the squad. Dele has been like some mixed flavoured ice cream on a hot afternoon just melting away to some psychedelic mush. Not good. Lo Celso, seemingly either injured or playing for Argentina or not engaged. Not good. Ndombele, seemingly not engaged, unmotivated or unfit in equal measure. Not good. Gil just not quite oven ready. To have so many negatives in the squad is not good especially when these players have more talent than the likes of Emerson or Davies or Doherty. Emerson, Davies and Doherty probably quietly get on with training, don’t rock any boats and buy into Conte’s system and style of play; they are less disruptive to balance and harmony within the squad. I suspect the two incomings will be the same. If so, it does at least make sense on some level.
I think as mentioned by others you should read the Martin Samuels article. He hits the nail firmly on the head.
If you class success for Levy as starting to rectify past mistakes whilst not leaving the first team squad completely devoid of options from the bench. Then, yes, it’s been successful.
If this is the start of the rebuild and more movements are expected, planned for and more importantly delivered in the summer. Then i can get on board with our transfer activity.
If we get to the last day of the summer transfer window and Levy is slapping in a last minute bid for Douglas Luiz because Declan Rice decided to go to Man Utd.. then nothing will have changed.
But I understand that January can be difficult. Next summer will prove once and for all whether the leopard has really changed it’s spots.
We really needed players Conte could trust in central midfield – Skipp, Winks and Hojbjerg seeing us through the remaining 20 games was a huge risk. I always thought that was a major, maybe THE major, area of concern.
The attacker I don’t know what he’ll bring, people are vague about his positioning and style, but he might bring creativity I don’t know – he is quoted saying his best position is play maker behind the forwards. If that’s the case he’s effectively an AM option.
Yes, we had a little dabble and forced Liverpool to show their interest and stump up the readies, maybe for a higher fee than they would have secured him in the summer. It’s disappointing but this is how it goes a lot of the time.
I’d like to see PHE in a box to box role. I think he can arrive late in the box and get 5-8 goals a season. Although he is limited with the ball.
Spot on, it’s just easy to always blame levy for some fans rather than take an objective approach….levy has his flaws but come on guys Liverpool were heavily linked with Diaz in the summer, the only way we would of got him is if Liverpool were short of funds and we were only one interested
Tend to agree. Pirlo speaks highly of Bentancur, who evidence shows has been getting a lot more game time at Juve than some on here suggest, and by some accounts, while he was at Inter, Conte wanted Kulusevski. Conte might have preferred to strengthen other areas first. However, I’m pretty certain he’d not have been shy in telling Parataci he didn’t want these blokes if he didn’t think them worth having.
Central midfield and creativity were our two biggest needs imo – so we sort of helped with those
It’s kind of naive to think that had we gone in stronger earlier for Diaz that Liverpool still wouldn’t of come in. We always were second choice
In your eyes as with many others levy will never do right. He broke transfer record for tanguy who was being tracked biggest clubs in Europe. It didn’t work out as don’t alot of big signings…..look at the sums Everton and United have spent. The levy haters think it’s easy to spend big attract the best for a club like spurs it’s fundamentally a lack of understanding of football and the transfer process and a bias to your own team.
We’ve spent alot over the years on players from abroad that haven’t worked. I’d rather see spurs spend 50/60 million on 2,3 or even 4 younger players from championship/league one.
We looked a small side in the cup vs Chelsea have to say
Both will come in handy defending corners.
Why are you so willing to assume it is the club that is to blame rather than Tanner. Based on the information I’ve seen, it could be either. However, unless we made a truly insulting offer, I’d be questioning the mentality of a non-league player turning down an opportunity to go to any Premier League side of our stature.
He could have done better by bringing in a dedicated RWB as opposed to the 2 plums we currently have who are both conventional RB’s who can’t adapt. Ditto when/if Kane picks up his annual ankle injury. He will regret not bringing in a striker especially as Sonny appears to be suffering from long covid.
But when we lose out on top 4 and Levy loses out on millions in CL money he might reflect upon that. As usual Levy sanctions barely enough to see us through, the bare minimum to prevent a revolt.
Bentacur’s figures for this season don’t say bench warmer; he’s had a fair amount of game time for Juve and it’s not been duff European competition stuff.
I certainly think Mike is correct about the work-rate and attitudes of the incoming players. They both seem to be upgrades in that respect.
Dejan too is a big lad. Gets stuck in for a winger/AM which will endear him to fans.
I personally would have liked a couple more signing…..ideally in the first couple weeks in January as opposed to mad rush on the final weekend.
Overall pleased we have shifted who we have (must be saving at least 500K a week in salaries)
Levy must be listening to Conte (to ship out in access of £100 million, better late than never) and if we can get top 6 this season and then push on in summer transfer window.
A very average window IMO. Fully understand how difficult it is to attract players mid-season, but I do think we could have addressed the areas we needed – RWB, CB, AM, CF.
Positives are that we got rid (temporarily in some cases) of some unwanted characters, and that we brought in two decent players. Don’t know much about Bentancur but he sounds like an upgrade on Winks as a DM. Dejan will definitely improve the creative side of things as he was excellent at Parma (always been my second team) and has just stagnated a little at Juve.
In an ideal world I would have liked us to set up a few free transfers for the Summer – Sam Johnstone (GK), Andrea Belotti (CF) and Alessio Romagnoli (CB) for example. We could then save some monies for a couple of other areas such as RWB and AM.
Overall, it’s tricky, as the best players are unlikely to consider us at the moment. As such, we need to ‘box clever’, use our contacts, pick up some young talent, sign freebies (that are proven) and utilise any money available on a couple of true quality players where possible.
Hopefully Romero and Son returning will make a difference also.
Good riddance, sounds like an arrogant twat.
The big plus with Bentancur for me is his height and the fact that he is also good in the air. We’ve had midfield midgets for so long now.
… and Conte often likes to have a 3-man midfield too… so we just have more options/backup there now (given unfortunately Celso, Ndombele and Alli didn’t really contribute that much to a 3-man midfield under Conte).
We should get a dedicated RWB in the summer, a class act. We should have got one this Jan tbh. Then I believe the only options for Royal are to retrain him to play on the right side of back 3 as cover, or sell him. Everyone bangs on about getting rid of Doherty but Royal is even less offensively minded. Over to you Antonia on that one.
Bentancur seems to be a better passer than what we have (though only what I have gone to look at on google), so whilst a DM he is slightly different to what we have. This probably means PEH or Skipp and Bentancur or Winks will be our midfield pairings. So whist not a complete Mousa replacement he is the closest we’ve now got and should transition the play better.
The Samuel article is a good read, not many Journo’s brave enough to go anti-Levy.
Sonny, Bergy, Moura, the Swede all creative, plus don’t forget most of it comes from the wingbacks, so no change there unfortunately.
Maybe he’s planning on Hoj and Bentacour with Skipp or Winks becoming a bit more forward thinking. We shall see.
More delusional thinking… surely you can see that as soon as Spurs got involved with Traore Barca registered their interest with his agent, thats more likely why it dragged on and ended the way it did, same goes for Diaz. Given the choice would you rather play for Spurs, or Barca or Liverpool?
Doesn’t matter how much money is on the table when these clubs come in for you.
yes he looks good and for peanuts….and for a club with 1 striker for the best part of forever why didn’t we go in for him…
And so should pay some non-league 19 year old punk 100 grand a week?
Yes, we did shift some deadwood and I understood that Lyon have an option to buy N’dombele back, which would generate a big loss for our club. I also think that Lo Celso would prefer to stay in Spain and if he performs under Emery, he will probably be bought by Villareal.I am happy to see the back of Alli. I only hope he plays enough games under Lampard so that we can get a decent amount of money back from him. It’s a pity that Levy didn’t loan him to PSG last January. I cannot see where the creativity is going to come from as we have disposed of three AMs. I would have preferred if we had bought Zakaria instead of Juve who have palmed us off with two benchwarmers. I think it is fair to say that it would have been difficult to address all the problem areas in this January window but Diaz would have brought a different dimension to the team but Liverpool are a football club and we are a property company.
If any of you have read Martin Samuel’s column in today’s mail, he successfully debunks the myth that Levy is the shrewdest negotiator in the transfer market. He was outwitted by both Liverpool and Barcelona. I cannot see that Kane will be hugely reassured by these signings but perhaps he has missed his chance to play at a top club now. Meanwhile, Newcastle will only get stronger if they avoid relegation and one has to be impressed by Villa’s recruitments. Levy’s decision to go eighteen months without making a signing is now coming home to roost. We are miles behind the top teams and there are others who are improving rapidly. Years of neglect and stupidity in the transfer market will cost us dearly.
The only deadwood who has moved on is Dele – the others have been loaned and remain our problem to shift permanently, but I agree it is better they not be here for an important second half of the season.
None of us know how the two incoming players will perform, we can only hope, as is true with every signing.
Still a long way to go with this squad, two more windows at least: Doherty, Rodon, Sanchez, Tanganga, Emerson, Winks, Bergwijn all have question marks against their names IMHO.
I am gutted that City got Julian Alvarez, I think he will be a success for them. We should have snapped him up last summer.
You seem to be clinging to the notion that Diaz had any intention whatsoever of signing for Spurs.
The Ollie Tanner deal was turned away by THFC, not he rejecting a move as was reported.
He didn’t want to play in u.23’s & his personal demands were outrageously excessive.
(This on top of the fact he had previously ridiculed Harry Kane on social media….& he’s an Arsenal fan)
Dele lazy, Tanguy bad attitude, Lo Celso, by all accounts, an unpopular weirdo… the other loans all make sense (except Gil, who probably would have been better off in the UK, but maybe a trip back to spain will boost his confidence).
The new Swede looks useful, the Uruguayan builds options at DM so we don’t have to ever play Winks and Skipp togethehr.
Happy enough, although I remain unconvinced that Sonny and Bergy are really like for like cover for Harry, but we all know how annoying it is to panic buy some sub-standard striker we’re then stuck with for 4 seasons.
Why is Tanner getting all the blame for this still deal not happening? Spurs are the 8th richest club in the world ffs…
‘Trumped up’? Liverpool didn’t seem to have any issues with it, that’s because Diaz is a proper player. Not just ‘potential’ but a player that already produces.
Tangy was just an example of Levy’s hopeless transfer policy and lack of due diligence.
So what your saying is that, because Tanguy was a disaster that we shouldn’t sign players that are highly rated and therefore ‘pricey’?
If you’re a non-league player and offered a contract by a big-name club… you don’t quibble about personal terms… you grab it with both hands. Even if he doesn’t ever make the grade for Spurs first team… he’s in a ‘shop window’ and there’s a good chance he’ll end up a playing League One (at maybe £5k a week – bish bosh loads of dosh [compared to the average punter anyway])
It depends whether the fast food outlets in Lyon are better than North London, I doubt it somehow.
Yes Levy is always the puppet master making things difficult for his DoF. It will be the same in the summer, just wait and see. How long Conte puts up with this bullsh1t is anybodies guess.
Nobody’s gonna give up 200k a week without a fight, especially a wastrel like Belly…
Well, there always some excuse isn’t there? 🤔
At this point I’d stay clear of a trumped up name who might not deliver… get in some that will more likely ‘fight for the team’ and then take a studied approach in the summer to a top-name signing.
Better steer clear of these stellar buys then, just like we did with Diaz, ‘bullet dodged’ eh?
When Levy demolishes the Love Lane housing estate, he’s going to put a new pedestrianised approach called ‘Stella Street’.
Stellar infrastructure, pound-shop squad…
The Ollie Tanner situation might say more about him than Spurs. This is the lad who supposedly made fun of the way Kane spoke, has a family history of supporting Arsenal… and possibly just threw away the biggest break he’ll ever have because ‘he’s just too good for Tottenham’. Jog on..
Paratic is also known for ‘not haggling over a couple of millions if he believes that the player can improve the team’, he’s also not known to leave it till 11th hour. Yet Spurs did both of those things and lost out on Diaz and Traore. Maybe Fabio tried his best, but the biggest obstacle to his MO was not another club or agent but his own boss.
Everyone is carrying on as if we’ve sold Belly and No Show. We haven’t, if their current form continues they will both be back stinking out Hotspur Way in the summer. Oh joy.
Don’t ask who are options 3, 4 and 5. It could get painful
5 options for each recruit and he gets two reserves from Juve, what happened to the other 4 options? 🤔
Best at the world at what, loaning players out? Couldn’t get Diaz or Ollie Tanner done yet gets two fringe players from his former employers. Stellar stuff!! 😂
I’d agree it was decent in many ways. And it this point I’d rather two ‘soldiers’ come in rather than a temperamental ‘stellar buy’ (we just offloaded the last stellar buy who would propel us forward).
All true, however the Diaz debacle demonstrates that this window could have been a very different story. Although, how much of all that was merely posturing, we’ll never know.
The Diaz failure and the inability to get Ollie Tanner over the line is much more in keeping with what we expect, and we got what we expected.
The Juve pair are little more than ‘low-risk’ window dressing from Paratici’s former employers.Two bench warmers,15m for one and a loan-to-buy with 8.5m up front for the other.
The departures remove about 15m from the wage bill for the remainder of the season, and there’s the potential 40m for Dele. We can expect at least about 10m to reach Spurs by the summer from the Dele deal.
So fag packet maths show we will have made about 5m out of these deals. Nothing spent, yet again. Diaz? Never in a million years…
The Juve lads were always options for Paratici if the way he recruits is true. 5 options for each recruit.
We may have already have looked to take them on regardless of if we got Diaz over the line, as squad players and for the future.
Where we recruit Jack Clarkes of the worlds these are a bit better with that perspective.
Paratici gets signed off by Levy.
It wasn’t levy it was paratici.. he is known to be the best in the world at this .
got rid of players who have showed no value and got in some young players for cheap due to his connections with juventus
good January window more to come