Long Form: Assessing Tottenham’s Deadline Failures
By Ryan Wrenn
What Happened on Deadline Day?
Somewhere between these two at-times polarized ends of Tottenham Hotspur lies an explanation for what exactly happened on Tuesday. A day that began with a kind of exhausted optimism ended with many fans debating how the club had failed so miserably.
Such a debate is far from unfamiliar for Tottenham fans. For years now the club has rightfully been derided for its tendency to pursue a deadline day deal. Perhaps chairman Daniel Levy believes that leaving such business for late means the seller is under more pressure to give Tottenham a good deal. Perhaps the club’s scouting network needs to get as much of a look at a player as possible before they recommend a purchase. Or, as many fans have speculated, perhaps there’s something seriously broken about the club’s transfer policy.
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There were signs of hope in the last year however. Tottenham managed to acquire Southampton’s vaunted head of recruitment Paul Mitchell in November of 2014, a move that suggested that club was doubling down on recruiting and developing younger players to supplement and perhaps eventually replace expensive forays into the transfer market. It was an encouraging development and left many Spurs fans with high hopes for this summer’s transfer market.
Were you to ask many Tottenham fans at the end of last season what else needed to be done before September, they likely would have told you that Harry Kane needed support at striker and the midfield needed to be fortified. Those same fans might have been encouraged by the wholesale clear out relatively early in the transfer window of not only the midfield but the defense and strikeforce as well. These were, it seemed at the time, the motions of a club that had learned the benefits of foresight and were about to use it to undergo a serious overhaul.
Next: How Did Tottenham's Summer Moves Work Out?