Football News: Spurs And The Underperformers

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The thing that always surprises me is Tottenham Hotspur. They always seem to buy one or two very highly rated players each summer, then the players spend the next few seasons failing to live up to their reputation. It is hard to understand exactly what goes wrong, as each season sees the club as a whole fail to quite live up to expectations.

You can quite easily go through the Spurs squad and just pick out players who should be doing better. The big question though is why so many players come in with big reputations and fail? The set up at White Hart Lane, from training facilities, to coaching staff, to finances etc is that of a club that should be able to succeed.

So why has Roberto Soldado failed so spectacularly? What has stopped Erik Lamela from becoming the big star he was widely tipped to become? How has Moussa Dembele gone from the purring Rolls-Royce of a player that he was at Fulham, to become a bit part struggling midfielder once he joined Tottenham?

My personal view is that the recruitment choices leave a lot to be desired, not because of a lack of quality, but because of them not being suited to the way the team plays. Partially because the managers change and change the style of football played, but mostly because the recruitment process is badly flawed. The choice of players is badly thought out, players being chosen are not ones that offer the right attributes for English football.

Then there is Daniel Levy. A tough negotiator, but sometimes he is too tough and so the club misses out on the right players and ends up with the Emmanuel Adebayor type of desperation signing, instead of the ones wanted and needed. All of that has left them short of making the top four again in recent years, but only just falling short.

There is still just a small gap between Spurs and a top four finish, one that can be easily closed in this transfer window. The centre backs look to be sorted, the right back situation is too, so Spurs have made large strides this summer. With Ryan Mason, Nabil Bentaleb and Harry Kane being a year older and, hopefully for Spurs' fans, better, this is a team capable of finishing top four next season.

Spurs really need to sort out this issue of underperforming players, to identify the right players and bring them in. With the importance of the Champions League money growing each year, they really can no longer afford to be chasing the pack with the new stadium on the horizon. This is the time for them to step up and make inroads, before the two Manchester sides rebuild.

The communication at the upper levels needs to improve, so that players are no longer forced on a manager, the way Lamela was on Andre Villars-Boas. The club needs to be one team, right from the top down to the tea lady at the academy. This might be the last chance Tottenham have for a long time to break into the top four, they need to make it count.

Written by Tris Burke July 29 2015 17:38:42