Tottenham Hotspur are sitting just one point above the Premier League relegation zone with a mere seven games remaining in the 2025/26 season, and it has become apparent to everyone that this club just isn't good enough. Thomas Frank really sunk a team that started the season performing well under the vestiges of Ange Postecoglou's philosophy, and while Spurs were already 17th under Postecoglou, Frank somehow managed to make them look worse.
Now, there is a clear issue of talented players being cast aside or underperforming under poor coaching, and, hopefully, Roberto De Zerbi can fix that relatively quickly as a significant tactical upgrade on both Frank and Igor Tudor.
But he can't fix everything, and there is a clear quality gap in Spurs. There are players getting important minutes or in key starting or rotational roles who simply do not have the quality to be getting major playing time at a Big Six Premier League club.
Pape Matar Sarr is wanted by Turkey
Pape Matar Sarr is far from the worst offender, but the 23 year old center midfielder is one of the top rotational players and a pretty important midfielder to Tottenham this season despite being the definition of mediocre and a fairly unremarkable attacking and even defensive player in the middle of the park for Spurs.
According to a transfer rumor from Turkish outlet Takvim, via Lilywhite Rose, Turkish Super Lig clubs Fenerbahce and Galatasaray are interested in signing Sarr this summer. While those are two of the big powerhouses of Turkish football and Galatasaray made quite an impression in the Champions League this season, it is telling that clubs that normally spend on 30 year old veterans are driven to sign Sarr.
It affirms that at 23, Sarr is not a future star player. He is a role player, a cog in the wheel, and those are the sorts of players who attract interest from the Turkish Super Lig and nobody else. Sarr is not generating interest from big clubs the way Lucas Bergvall and Archie Gray are, and yet under Frank, for example, he was getting similar playing time to those guys.
That just shows you how Roberto De Zerbi needs to set a higher standard at Tottenham Hotspur and know his profiles better than Thomas Frank, and it also shows you that Pape Matar Sarr, while a perfectly decent player, just does not have that star power that a big club like Tottenham - one with bigger ambitions than Galatasaray and Fenerbahce - should be coveting from the players in their squad. If they want to keep him around, he has to be a pure depth option, replacing Yves Bissouma and the poorly made Conor Gallagher signing in that role.