Tottenham face questions about priorities

To some, news on Thursday that Tottenham were drawing closer to signing Davinson Sánchez felt both refreshing and frustrating.

The 21-year-old will be Tottenham’s first signing of the summer transfer window, and is slated not to be the last if a whirlwind of rumors can be believed.

Getting Sánchez should feel like a coup. Here is a young defender with a full season’s worth of experience playing in both the Dutch Eredivisie and the Europa League. Perhaps he doesn’t come with the resume of an Eric Bailey or even an Antonio Rüdiger, but Mauricio Pochettino will have another unsculpted talent to mold into his style of play.

Perhaps the record-setting £40 million fee feels steep — it is a huge leap from the next closest amount paid for a player by Tottenham — but in an inflated market it hardly registers. It sounds cliched, but with a rare six-year deal for the young Colombian, Spurs are paying for the best years of his career.

Unease sets in when pondering Sánchez’s immediate future with the club. Just what immediate need is he addressing?

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Even with the exorbitant amount paid, it is extremely unlikely he dislodges either Toby Alderweireld or Jan Vertonghen. Perhaps he can challenge Eric Dier for the Englishman’s spot on the right side of a back-three, but Sánchez is much more accustomed to a more traditional centre-back role. That’s not a huge hurdle to surmount, but it’s still notable.

All of which likely means the Colombian will begin his Tottenham career as an option in rotation, particularly as the club attempts to improve their Champions League form while continuing to compete domestically.

However valuable depth at centre-back might be, it’s difficult to shake the impression that that £40 million — a fee that represents the bulk of what Spurs got for Kyle Walker — might have been better spent elsewhere.

Is the club so sold on the ability of Kyle Walker-Peters off the strength of a single performance to not reinforce at right-back? Doesn’t Mousa Dembélé turning 30 this year point to the fact that the club lack a natural successor in that all important role? Can Vincent Janssen really be trusted as the sole understudy to Harry Kane?

Pochettino admitted in Friday’s pre-match press conference that he wants three or four players before the end of the transfer window. Sánchez, then, will be part of a whole new incoming class, and the apparent significance of this transfer might diminish.

With the budget presumably so tight however, what more can be done with whatever remains after that £40 million? As of right now it’s hard to imagine Tottenham spending more than that again, perhaps not even in aggregate.

Next: Chelsea is ripe for the picking

To a cynic’s eye, the Sánchez represents an answer to a question no one was really asking. It would be fine, perhaps, if the deal existed in isolation, but Tottenham’s finite resources more or less guarantee that some will be left wondering how this money might have been better spent.