Tottenham are looking to overhaul their transfer strategy and will try to offload eight players over the course of the next two windows, according to respected journalist Duncan Castles.
After spending big on players such as Lucas Moura and Serge Aurier, Spurs will now return to the same focus on youth and scouting that yielded the likes of Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen, according to the Sunday Times man.
The club will also try to ship out a host of players deemed surplus to requirements.
Speaking on the Transfer Window Podcast, Sunday Times journalist Castles said: “What I’m told they’re now looking at is going back to the strategy they applied to get themselves into this position, which was to concentrate on younger talent at cheaper prices.
“Picking up players like Christian Eriksen, Son, Dele Alli as an even more marked example of a player, again, who you sign at a cheap price, wages not particularly high because they’re coming from markets where they’ve not been paid well and you see them developing within your team into the most desirable players in the country, which they have certainly achieved with Eriksen and certainly achieved with Dele Alli.
“They could sell those players, if the timing is right, for over €100m.
“They want to go back to this, they want to shift out I’m told eight players over the next two windows. Some obvious names like Vincent Janssen, Llorente, Danny Rose has been available for sale for a while, Moussa Dembele will leave in the summer when his contract ends, Toby Alderweireld.
“So move those players out and bring that category of younger talent in, with the idea that, essentially, they’ve been overachieving.
“The idea that they should properly contest the Premier League title is not sustainable given the resources they have and that to tailor the transfer strategy to try and push themselves to the edge of what they’re capable of doing in the hope that they can get a Premier League title is not sustainable given that they have severe financial extra handicap upon them in terms of the cost of building their new stadium.”
OPINION
If Castles’ claims are true then Tottenham fans should be worried. The decision to tighten the pursestrings again and to focus instead on bringing through youth may be good for the future and for unearthing some real gems, but is essentially an admission that Spurs will not challenge for a title any time soon. You can understand the reasoning behind the logic, if it is true, and it is better for the club to exercise caution instead of over stretching and potentially damaging itself, but it will still come as a frustration to fans, who will no doubt worry even more about Mauricio Pochettino’s future now. If the Argentine isn’t going to be backed in the transfer market then he would be forgiven for wondering what the point of it all is, and wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have his head turned by the unending funds available at Old Trafford or the Bernabeu.