If you were to ask any neutral which Premier League club required major squad surgery this summer, it’s fair to say most would have agreed it was Tottenham Hotspur.
After embarrassing, back-to-back 17th-placed finishes in the Premier League Spurs were at their lowest ebb this summer. Narrowly avoiding relegation to the Championship was hardly anything to celebrate. It was the nadir for Tottenham fans. It had to be.
Roberto de Zerbi spoke passionately after clinching that aforementioned survival about how this situation could never be repeated and how Spurs needed to learn from it. The powers-that-be have certainly took heed and the chequebook has barely closed this summer.
The impending arrival of Savinho from Manchester City for a fee that could eventually rise to £85million takes Spurs’ spending past an eye-watering £300m after similar splurges on Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes and Jan Paul van Hecke.
The tally could rise even further should Omar Marmoush replicate Savinho’s journey from the Etihad to North London, as is being widely reported.
“Savio is a player who brings energy, imagination and quality in wide positions,” his new manager said of the latest arrival. “He has the courage to attack defenders and the ability to change a game with his creativity. We’re very pleased to have him with us, and I’m looking forward to working with him, helping him continue to grow and seeing him bring his personality to the team.”
The financial backing that de Zerbi has received may not come as too much of a surprise given just how much Spurs showed they wanted him in their hour of need (a five-year contract was dangled in front of him despite Tottenham having only a handful of games to avoid the catastrophe of relegation). But there’s no doubting that results need to follow.
Amid the green shoots of optimism, Spurs folded on the opening weekend as Brentford took them to the cleaners. The Bees could and probably should have enjoyed a far greater margin of victory than the 3-0 win they chalked up.
The Italian knows he cannot afford too many more results like that, even at this embryonic stage. Regarding the lavish spending, he’s spoken about how the funds spent are being done with moving the team firmly away from the lower reaches. He said, on the eve of the season: “I’ve heard too many times Tottenham money, Tottenham money, but I loved football for a long time and I didn’t see any team competing for the high level without spending money.
“Maybe if Tottenham spend money [it] is a problem in the Premier League? I don’t know why, but all the other teams have spent money in the past and also in this season.
“When we have finished in this transfer market, for a long time we don’t need many things and we can work all together in the right condition, in the right direction, to build step by step something special, or anyway to go to compete for the top of the table.”
For de Zerbi’s and Tottenham’s sake, they need this summer splurge to pay off.
