TOTTENHAM WOULD LIKE to think it was all part of the masterplan. Ahead of today’s crunch clash with Manchester City, they sit second in the Premier League, five points off leaders Leicester.
Many continue to tip Spurs as potential dark horses for the title and if they continue their recent excellent run of form, they will at the very least be on course to achieve their best-ever finish of the Premier League era.
Moreover, a win today would put the Londoners 10 points ahead of fifth-place Man United and leave them odds on to secure Champions League qualification for just the second time since the modern incarnation of Europe’s top club competition was established in 1992.
The prevailing narrative suggests the secret of Tottenham’s success has been bravely doing what other teams are afraid to and giving young, talented, under-the-radar players a sustained run in the first team. Their success implementing this policy has been so impressive, unexpected and refreshing to see that they have even garnered comparisons to Man United’s famous Class of ’92 team.
And the claims are certainly true to a point — Tottenham have the youngest team in the Premier League, with an average age of 24.7.
Equally impressive is how little most of their players cost — of their two best attacking stars this season, 22-year-old Harry Kane was an academy product, while 19-year-old Dele Alli, bought from MK Dons last season, cost just £5 million.
In addition, Tottenham’s defence is the best in the Premier League, having conceded just 19 goals. Of all the defenders they have used, only Toby Alderweireld cost more than £10 million. At the moment, in particular, Hugo Lloris (£7.9million), Danny Rose (£1 million) and Kevin Wimmer (£4.3 million) are looking like bargains. Meanwhile, Eric Dier, who has been superb all season in protecting the back four, was similarly good value at £4 million. By comparison, Tottenham’s opponents today Man City spent £49 million last summer on Raheem Sterling – over £15 million more than the seven Spurs players mentioned above.
In January, the White Hart Lane outfit made no major signings, while the departure of Federico Fazio left them with just three recognised senior centre-backs available. However, the minutes of a recent meeting with the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust (THST) noted:
“Daniel Levy referenced that the Fazio loan deal had been possible because Mauricio Pochettino, (head of coaching and player development) John McDermott and (head of recritment) Paul Mitchell are confident in the abilities of a younger player to step up to the first team if required,”
Yet Tottenham have not always been so prudent in their transfer dealings. They notoriously spent all of the £85.3 million received for Gareth Bale on new players, many of whom effectively flopped. The seven players brought in with the Bale money plus whatever else they had lying around reportedly cost them a combined £110 million, yet within two years, only three of the individuals in question were still at the club – Erik Lamela, Nacer Chadli and Christian Eriksen, with the latter star the only one currently regarded as an unqualified success.
Consequently, after so many of the post-Bale signings disappointed, did Tottenham suddenly decide that trusting in young, less heralded players was the way forward? Did they get sick and tired of spending exorbitant amounts on underwhelming foreign imports? Did Mauricio Pochettino and Louis van Gaal make the shortlist of candidates to replace Andre Villas-Boas as permanent Tottenham manager primarily because of their reputation for developing inexperienced players and often overachieving with limited resources (for Pochettino and Southampton, read Van Gaal and Ajax/AZ)? Yes and no is the answer to all these questions.
Tottenham did consciously adopt a policy whereby youth team players and cheap under-the-radar bargains would, for the most part, be preferred to expensive international stars, but it’s not as if they had much of a choice.
Like Arsenal a few years ago with the Emirates, Tottenham’s imminent move to a new stadium means they must undertake a period of relative austerity. So the main reason why the club have been relatively restrained in their transfer dealings since the Bale splurge (the £22 million paid to Bayer Leverkusen for South Korean international Son Heung-min was the only exception) is because paying for a new stadium — especially for a club that doesn’t have the financial luxury of Champions League football to fall back on — is not cheap by any means.
Young players, as well as potentially being good value, are unlikely to demand high wages, unlike Emmanuel Adebayor, Paulinho, Roberto Soldado, Aaron Lennon and other costly underperformers that Spurs got rid of in the summer.
Yet regardless of how they got there, Tottenham have had plenty of success with their hugely talented crop of players, with an absence of vanity and a clear willingness to meticulously follow Pochettino’s demands evident in all their performances this campaign.
Of course, Spurs sides in the past have been prone to catastrophic end-of-season collapses, while some have suggested the intensive high-energy approach their manager demands leaves players burnt out well before the end of the season. Yet assuming they do qualify for next year’s Champions League, the financial toll will ease on Spurs considerably, while the additional TV income set to come in during the 2016-17 campaign will further alleviate such concerns.
Therefore, it will be intriguing to see how the situation develops in the summer. Will Tottenham try to capitalise on their newfound financial and footballing success by finally relenting and buying a couple of big-name stars for huge sums? Or will they continue to trust in youth and avoid paying over the odds for expensive mercenaries as they essentially did with the Bale money in 2013? Just how much chairman Daniel Levy believes in this masterplan is about to be revealed.
