Tottenham Hotspur defensive midfielder Sandro Tonali has mildly turned his season around after a terrible start, improving from disaster classes against Brentford and Newcastle United to give some steely performances on the defensive side of the ball while aiding Roberto De Zerbi in controlling his opponents.
But in terms of creativity and actual individual quality, Tonali has done little to help change games for Spurs, as the club sit 20th in the table despite spending 380 million pounds on new signings this past summer transfer window.
Of all the signings, Tonali was the most expensive, as he came to Spurs as an established player at Newcastel United and a former Scudetto winner - someone who helped pull up AC Milan and turned them back into a juggernaut in European football.
Sandro Tonali has not shown his upside yet
But Roberto De Zerbi may have to realize that as badly as he wanted Tonali, he is not going to get a 100 million pound player out of him. Maybe in 2021/22 when AC Milan won Serie A, Tonali was getting into a position where he had the potential to be worth that kind of money as a player in the future, but at no point in his career, including at Newcastle, has Tonali been worth 100 million pounds in a vacuum.
There is, of course, the potential that Sandro Tonali could be that kind of a world class defensive midfielder, and the theoretical version that De Zerbi hopes to extract out of his fellow Brescia native is indeed that caliber of a player.
But Tonali hasn't shown it yet, and so far in the 2026/27 Premier League season, Tottenham Hotspur fans are staring down the fact that Tonali is a good but maybe more limited player than both they and their manager had anticipated when he urged Johan Lange and Vinait Venkatesham to sanction this 100 million pound signing.
Tonali has not been more impressive than the younger 85 million pound addition Mateus Fernandes, nor as he even been as good as Rodrigo Bentancur. That's not to say, again, that Tonali has been bad, but when it comes to meeting the price tag, De Zerbi may have to face the fact that Tonali is going to have to be evaluated on different terms and may not be able to live up to that valuation.
It is still early days for De Zerbi, Tottenham, and especially Tonali, but with Spurs struggling to score goals and still winless in five games, the club are going to need their new midfielder to show more of an impact ont he final score line to begin to come close to justifying his sky high fee.
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