Tottenham Don't Need More Crafty Young Midfielders

Not to beat a dead horse, but it feels the right time to remind people of a long-standing HotspurHQ hot take: Tottenham have no need for more enterprising playmakers.

This is the same Tottenham that regularly features both Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli, and will soon be welcoming back Érik Lamela.

Despite those fine specimens’ presence in the roster, Spurs continue to be linked similar players with astronomical sums attached to their names.

The latest such link revolves around Everton’s Ross Barkley. According to the Evening Standard’s report on Tuesday, the England international is “willing to move” to north London.

That itself is hardly news. Barkley would be trading what, best case scenario this season and maybe next, the Europa League for a likely Champions League berth and future runs at the Premier League title.

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Barkley’s preferred club ignores the fact that even with their star rising, Tottenham are simply not in need of a player like him. Even if Daniel Levy makes the mistake of selling one of Eriksen, Dele or Lamela, there are players coming up through the system anxiously awaiting their chance.

It’s that latter point that bears repeating — and cuts to the heart of what Tottenham are as a club in 2017.

There’s no denying that, despite overtures to the contrary, Spurs remain a buying — rather than a developing — club. Yes, Mauricio Pochettino continues to favor younger players. And yes, the club are in the red thanks to plenty of well-crafted deals on players sold, but that is despite the fact that they have spent £40 million plus on new players for each of the last two seasons.

That sum, it so happens, is right in line with the supposed asking price of Barkley and other targets, such as the oft-linked Isco. It would certainly be in keeping with past habits for Spurs to spend that much on those players this coming summer.

Is this version of Spurs the same one that paid so much for Heung-min Son in 2015, or even the same one that broke their own record to acquire — of all people — Moussa Sissoko last summer?

If what we know about everything else going on the club has any bearing, Spurs shouldn’t be. With the new stadium costing far more than originally expected and few, if any, of their big money buys in recent years paying off, Pochettino and Levy have every reason to break with habit.

Buying yet another midfield dynamo like Barkley or Isco would then be the last thing they would want to do this summer. Neither player adds anything new to this Tottenham squad, and their presence alone would mean one of the club’s current strong starters would need to be dropped.

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Moreover, it would add yet another roadblock in the path of promising youngsters like Marcus Edwards. Pochettino himself has touted the 18-year-old as an English Messi. Why exactly would anyone at the club want to delay or discourage a young player like that?

Which is roughly 500 words of explaining a rather simple point, one that we have made before and will make again: ignore transfer rumors.

Tottenham Don’t Need More Crafty Young Midfielders

By Ryan Wrenn | Mar 21, 2017

Not to beat a dead horse, but it feels the right time to remind people of a long-standing HotspurHQ hot take: Tottenham have no need for more enterprising playmakers.