Tottenham Hotspur are in the top three in the 2025/26 Premier League table right now at the October international break, and a lot of the credit for the turnaround has to go to new manager Thomas Frank, who has stabilized this team and gotten them to play much more complete football tactically than predecessor Ange Postecoglou, who is currently humiliating himself at Nottingham Forest.
But not all the credit can go to Frank, as new additions to the squad in the summer 2025 transfer window have made their mark as top players in the Premier League. Mohammed Kudus, most prominently, has stepped his game up from West Ham and become a world-class winger for Spurs already, making a Tottenham attack without him almost unfathomable.
Fellow new young, big-name attacking addition Xavi Simons hasn't been as spellbinding as Kudus, but, he, too, looks like a real future building block for the Lilywhites. However, he's been overshadowed in the midfield by a more defensive player in Joao Palhinha, who actually has three goals to remind people that, in addition to being an excellent No. 6, he's not exactly a schlub wih the ball either.
Tottenham fans are smitten with Palhinha at this point, and most of them are hoping that Tottenham will invoke the 25 million pound option to buy the 30-year-old midfield veteran at the end of the 2025/26 campaign.
Fabrizio Romano is optimistic
According to Fabrizio Romano on the Give Me Sport Market Madness podcast, there is a "good chance" that Tottenham will agree to keep Palhinha on a permanent basis at the end of the season and that Fab is "quite optimistic" that this will be the case, though he cages that by saying it's still early in the season and things could change:
"I think there is a good chance of seeing Palhinha staying at Tottenham in 2026. Then let's see if it's going to be via the option, or maybe they want to re-negotiate with Bayern. It's too early to say, still at the beginning of October, so many months to go before they make any decision. But internally, the feeling is very positive. Palhinha is happy at Tottenham, and Thomas Frank and Tottenham are also very happy with him. So it's a very, very good deal for all parties involved. And now it's going to be about the agreement with Bayern in 2026, again, it's still early, so let's see how the season will go. But the start of this loan deal has been positive, and all parties are more than happy to continue together. So I would be quite optimistic on that one, but again it's still a long season and we have to see what's going to happen next."
It would be an upset if Tottenham didn't keep Palhinha. Only injury or a vast decline in his quality could change that, and the latter happening seems to have a very low chance, given Palhinha was already one of the best 6's in the Premier League at Fulham, which is why he ended up at a club like Bayern in the first place.
Obviously, Palhinha is doing a lot more for Tottenham than he did at Bayern, and he's publicly made it clear that he's happier in North London. Tottenham needed a player with his athleticism and defensive quality, and now that they have him, 25 million pounds now looks like a small price to pay for that quality.