Time and time again, Tottenham Hotspur have proven to their fans that while they can occasionally sign a top target like Mohammed Kudus or Xavi Simons who can star for the team, they can never sign the truly elite transfer targets that all the other powerhouse clubs in the Premier League and abroad want to sign.
Once the clubs start lining up for a player and get serious about throwing around big money, wages, or an appealing sporting project, Tottenham completely fade out of the race. It happened last year with Desire Doue who went on to win the Champions League with PSG, it happened this past summer with Bryan Mbeumo and Rayan Cherki who are both now flying high for their respective Manchester clubs, and it is about to happen again in the January 2026 transfer window.
Tottenham need attacking help more badly than any other top team in the Premier League right now, because they are just not scoring enough goals. The left wing position, in particular, has been highlighted as a prime need for the club, and with Antoine Semenyo available at a 65 million pround release clause, there is no more obvious connecting of the two dots than these ones.
Tottenham are falling off
Problematically, Tottenham are almost completely falling out of the Semenyo transfer race all of a sudden. Once mentioned as prime candidates to sign Semenyo alongside the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Manchester City, Spurs have now faded out of the picture in the span of just one week.
The latest transfer insider to leave Tottenham Hotspur out of the proceedings is Give Me Sport journalist Ben Jacobs. A breakout star of the transfer reporting world, Jacobs writes that there are "two frontrunners" in the Antoine Semenyo transfer battle, and those two clubs are Manchester United and Manchester City - not Tottenham.
Liverpool are also out of it now, it seems, but they already spent a ton of money on Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, and Hugo Ekitike last summer. Tottenham bought Simons and Kudus, but they did not actually spend real money on a goal scorer; their only legitimate short term move was signing Randal Kolo Muani on loan, which was a bare minimum necessity.
Tottenham are now getting crushed again by Manchester United on the transfer market. Losing to Man City is nothing new, but getting pipped again and again by the team they beat in the Europa League Final has to be demoralizing to a different degree.