Tottenham eye move for Turkish Super Lig winger

With the season wrapping up in just over a month, Tottenham join the rest of European football in looking ahead to the summer transfer window.

There’s certainly plenty to be done before then, of course. Tottenham face Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday, and the title race against their London rivals is suddenly heated.

Mauricio Pochettino and company never stop looking at ways to improve the squad however, or at least give it some depth.

Last summer’s more-bust-than-boom business under former Head of Recruitment Paul Mitchell might have soured the club to greener targets however.

Of the five players brought in in 2016, only one — Victor Wanyama — can claim any glory with Spurs so far this season. Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko, meanwhile, could be walked to the exit as soon as this summer.

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So, if one were to guess where Tottenham might be looking as they prepare for the 2017/18 season, it wouldn’t be unfair to think they would pass over players like Bruma.

Which isn’t to suggest that Bruma is anything but full of promise. The 22-year-old is part of Portugal’s exceptionally talented new breed of attacking players. Tottenham are already well aware of the threat posed by Monaco’s Bernardo Silva, while the likes of Renato Sanches and João Mário are set to become stars in their own right.

As for Bruma himself, he’s matured considerably this season at Turkish Super Liga side Galatasaray. A previous stint at Real Sociedad saw Bruma feature plenty of appearances — 32 in total in La Lig alone in 2015/16 — but they were largely quiet. He only recorded two league goals that season.

Since returning to his parent club over the summer however, Bruma has blossomed. No Galatasaray player has been involved in more goals in 2016/17 — 14 in all including eight of his own.

Such meteoric rises hardly go unnoticed, and Bruma quickly found himself the subject of plenty of transfer rumors elsewhere in Europe. Among them, since Tuesday at least, appear to be Tottenham.

The Evening Standard carried a piece in which Galatasaray denied that their star winger is due for a move to north London in the summer. That is hardly surprising of course, and it won’t go long to persuading gossip mongerers to keep quiet about the potential move.

How, exactly, does Tottenham pursuing Bruma represent a break with the failures of the past though? Like Janssen and another 2016 signing, Georges-Kévin Nkoudou, before him, Bruma is enjoying a fantastic breakout season. It will undoubtedly earn him a move to a bigger club.

Playing in Turkey isn’t the same thing as playing in England, Spain or Germany however. Just as playing in the Netherlands and France, as Janssen and Nkoudou did respectively, clearly had no bearing on their ability to adapt to the Premier League. Bruma and other such players therefore represent a risk for any club, even ones with vaunted development programs like Tottenham.

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Perhaps Pochettino takes a punt on Bruma, assuming the Portuguese is available. More likely, though, the club will target players like Wanyama — men with Premier League experience or equivalent, who might be able to make a difference at the club immediately.