Antonio Conte is a great manager, there is no doubting that but he is also someone that hangs around for just two or three seasons and for that reason alone any signings he makes have to be scrutinised.
The chances of Tottenham winning the title in the next 24 months or so are slim and therefore the best we can probably hope for under Conte is a cup or two, which is fine and dandy but is it worth it if the cost of achieving that limited success sets us back many more years after the Italian departs.
The reason I bring this up is because doing my normal trawling of Tottenham news I came across a beauty from Patrick Berger at Sport1 who is claiming that Tottenham are interested in the services of Ivan Perisic.
In his day Perisic was a very good player but he is declining now and truth be told, was never ever a prolific scorer, I mean, his best ever season at Inter Milan was 11 Serie A goals and he was there for six years and played 186 league games.
He then moved to Bayern Munich on loan and in 35 games for the German champions scored just 8 goals,
Perisic is not good enough for Tottenham, he would be no good off the bench and would hardly fill the boots of Harry Kane in the event the England captain is unavailable.
I understand that Perisic once played under Conte but seriously, is this the sort of future we can expect under our new manager, older players with no resale value brought in for short term impact?
I accept he would be a free agent but he would not be cheap in terms of wages, would require a signing on fee, agent fees and of course, he would take up a very valuable squad spot, which is crucial considering all the homegrown player rules we have to abide by.
It is great that Conte is our manager but we have to think about the long term as well as the short term and in our rush for silverware, we need to be careful.