Lockdown gives you a lot of thinking time.
When it comes to Tottenham, I’ve mostly been thinking about the usual stuff – failed transfer activity and what could have been, etc.
And I don’t mean if we’d have spent hundreds of millions of pounds more, just if we hadn’t made fundamental mistakes in the market that has left us needing a major squad rebuild once again this summer.
It started going wrong in about 2017. So this article will recap the biggest missed opportunity from each of the past six transfer windows…
MORE: The Bookies’ 5 Most Likely Spurs Summer Signings
January 2020 – Odion Ighalo
It was unforgivable not to sign a striker to cover for Harry Kane, even though there weren’t loads of attractive options. I’m not saying I was disappointed to miss out on Ighalo by any stretch, but he was proving to be a good short-term solution for Manchester United with four goals in three starts and could have been ours had we moved before deadline day.
This is a weak start but trust me it gets much uglier.
Summer 2019 – Bruno Fernandes
Some Spurs fans may view Paulo Dybala as the one that got away from last summer, but that deal for the Juventus star did appear to be a complicated one to get done and thus I don’t think it can be classed as a mistake.
There is no such excuse for not getting Fernandes who was available from Sporting Lisbon and ended up at United six months later for £47m, fee according to BBC Sport. Like Ighalo, he has made an immediate impact at Old Trafford. He’s a goalscorer, creator, a top-class operator, and would have helped fill the void to be left by Christian Eriksen dropping anchor. Had we sold the Dane in the same window we may have been able to afford Fernandes, so perhaps that was the true mistake from this period.
January 2019 – Denis Zakaria /Youri Tielemans
I’ll let ex-Spurs midfielder Jamie Redknapp do the talking on this one…
Jamie Redknapp on the 29th January, 2019:
— The Spurs Web ⚪️ (@thespursweb) April 1, 2020
“I have no sympathy, you’ve just sold one of the best midfielders in the league.”
“I did not understand that Mousa Dembele move, financially it might be good but not for the team.”
Still valid to this day..😳
pic.twitter.com/CwTm5cue9J
Sky Sports reported in January 2019 that Mauricio Pochettino had been having Zakaria scouted for years to be prepared for Dembele’s departure. If the Swiss wasn’t available, Youri Tielemans was on loan and would have spared us the dreaded Moussa Sissoko-Harry Winks double pivot.
Summer 2018 – Jack Grealish
As The Sun details, we could have signed one of the Premier League’s best midfielders this season for £6m in 2018. Grealish had said his goodbyes but Daniel Levy wanted to shave a pound or two off the price and ballsed it up.
January 2018 – Janssen and Nkoudou
At the time, missing out on Ross Barkley to Chelsea looked bad business but that now looks like a lucky escape. In truth, the squad didn’t look in bad shape at this point and Lucas Moura has proved to be a decent addition, better than Malcom whose career has plummeted since his links to Spurs.
The mistake, if any during this window, was not being able to recoup any money for the likes of Vincent Janssen and Georges-Kevin Nkoudou who had been written off 18 months into their time at the club and yet were not sold until a year and a half later. Had Levy cut his losses on these two a bit earlier we may have had more money to spend the following summer.
Summer 2017 – Ricardo Pereira
We scouted Pereira as a potential replacement for Kyle Walker in 2017, but his undaunting release clause of €25m was a stumbling block, according to The Independent. He’s made that price look like loose change at Leicester, establishing himself as one of the best full-backs in the Premier League.
Serge Aurier ended up coming in at a very similar cost and has been one of the worst over the same period – another big error of judgment from Levy.
This is how Jose Mourinho’s team could have looked with these players…
Subs: Gazzaniga, Vertonghen, Tanganga, Ndombele, Grealish, Lucas, Ighalo
(Or something similar. Please don’t swear death upon me in the comments).
That looks a hell of a lot better than where we are now. It’s not perfect, but there are only one or two positions of concern compared to five or six now.
And I don’t think I’ve been unrealistic. Pereira would have cost no more than Aurier, and Fernandes, Zakaria and Grealish a similar amount to what we might end up spending on Steven Bergwijn and Gedson Fernandes.
READ MORE Quiz of Quizzes #1
READ MORE Quiz of Quizzes #2
READ MORE Quiz of Quizzes #3
It started going wrong well before 2017 thank you every much.
It was even worse than that mate. Multiple papers reported that a deal for 6 million was agreed, but because villa were relegated and on the verge of bankrupcy or administration, Levy tried haggling down to ‘4 or 5’ million.. In the process villa were took over by new owners who swiftly told scrooge to jog on… 6 million would have been a great deal hes worth 80 mil now.
The moose was underrated.
Our scouting and transfer system is woeful.. The only sensible signing in recent times I thought was davinson sanchez, whom I thought was to replace Toby… Walker dembele rose tintin trippier, none of them have been replaced. For years now we could have brought a couple or a few good players and kicked on to fight on all fronts… Tough to see us ever putting together a champion team under levy. If our managers ever need a specific player then they either get a budget version, or a budget version in the wrong position (example we need a striker so get a winger), or nothing at all. It’s no wonder we have a two bob team with a strange mix match of players.
Grealish is a good player, it would have been exciting to see him develop at Spurs, but him and Dele may have been a disaster on a night out. Fernandes is top draw. United got a bargain. As for replacing Dembele, that day may never come.
Previously, Levy had made Enic and himself a lot of money, but now the he has inflicted a lot of damage on the club. Leaving aside overspending on the new stadium by 100% , he has left the club with £635 mill of debt whilst awarding himself a bonus of £3mill for underperformance. Now , because of his cataclysmic decision to furlough the non-playing staff, unless you fancy mowing his lawn, his ambitions for the naming rights have disappeared into ashes. There is not a responsible blue chip company who will wish to be associated with such a revolting regime. His blunders in the transfer market which have been highlighted go back much further than 2017, but also so have his attempts to sell players at over inflated prices. Now that he has become the Gerald Ratner of football, perhaps Enic will examine his rapidly dissipating value to the club.
For me Grealish was the mother of all blunders. We could have had him for £15m but Danny dithered and haggled and in the end new owners took over Villa and told Danny boy to do one. The age, profile, skill set and fee would normally have been right up Dannys street but meddling in the project management of the new shopping centre was more important