When the history of the Pochettino era and Daniel Levy era is written there will be much that is good, great, and abysmal but the most damaging far-reaching decision was the period when Spurs deliberately froze themselves out of the transfer market.
Not bringing in fresh talent to upgrade the team was bad enough but an equally devastating side effect was that players who were either not good enough or past their sell-by date were not shown the exit.
The natural churn that keeps the existing squad on its toes making sure no one is sure of their place did not happen. It also had the unhappy effect of postponing decisions on players that should have been made in a timely manner and left players unhappy with their contracts and cost the club proper transfer fees, Eriksen, Trippier, Rose, Vertonghen, and now Dele.
Not replacing players at the correct time not only left huge wholes in the squad which still have to be filled e.g. Eriksen and Vertonghen, it also means that the replacement cost has soared with inflation, although COVID-19 will bring prices down, the selling prices will fall also.
Mourinho and the team are still suffering from the effects of Levy’s transfer freeze, to heap all the anger and frustration on Jose’s head is not only disingenuous it deflects blame from the person who was responsible for the gamble on transfers that no other major club in the elite European football leagues has ever done.