Trying to understand Tottenham Hotspur January transfer plan

We are 28 days into the transfer window and Tottenham Hotspur has not made one first-team deal in the market, so what exactly was the plan anyway?

As we grow closer to the end of the transfer window panic seems to have spread from our fans to the front office, so what exactly what the Tottenham Hotspur transfer plan? At this point, the short answer is there was not a plan. Instead of drawing quick conclusions, we want to take a look at the rumoured targets and see if there was something more here, despite the failures to date.

Part 1: Who have been the rumoured Tottenham targets?

Although when he arrived, Fabio Paratici was renowned for having as many as 10 transfer targets for each position, the overall number of links in this window has been few. For the most part, it has been a bunch of recycling of many of the same names from the summer or even windows prior.

Adama Traore, Paulo Dybala, and Dusan Vlahovic have all been linked in some way with Tottenham in past windows and again have all been linked with Spurs. Two of the three seemingly provide things Spurs desperately need – a creative attacking midfielder/second striker in Dybala and a legitimate Harry Kane alternative in Vlahovic. However, neither player was ever seriously coming to north London, as Dybala stays at Juventus and Vlahovic joins him.

Adama Traore has been a different story, as it seemed at times Tottenham had the deal done, yet it seems like Traore is going back to Spain as the next saviour at Barcelona. Traore could have spiced up the attack as a winger but seemingly was being pigeonholed as a wing-back, which is also one of the reasons he turned Tottenham down.

Although all could fill a need, they were also pre-existing and in Dybala’s case, long-term links with the club, which tells us absolutely nothing about what the new regime of Paratici and Antonio Conte really want. We need to look at the newer links to identify that.