A look at the players Spurs need to sell this summer - even if they avoid relegation from the Premier League.
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Whatever division Tottenham Hotspur find themselves in next season, it’s fair to assume that their squad will look rather different. Even if they avoid the drop, they have too many underperforming players (and too many wanted by other sides) to avoid a major rebuild over the course of the summer transfer window.
Some players could leave whether Spurs want them to or not, such as centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, but there are others in the squad who are more of a drain on the wage bill than a benefit to the team’s chances of getting back to their best – so we’ve picked out five players that Spurs should actively shop around in the coming months if they want to improve.
Mathys Tel
Tel arrived in North London with plenty of (perfectly justified) hype, having demonstrated himself to be an immense talent in the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich – but has failed to live up to either his billing or his £30m price tag. It may be best for Spurs to find a buyer while he still commands a substantial fee.
There are certainly moments when Tel has looked like the potential world-beater he was sold as when he first arrived, but he gets lost in games too often, makes too many questionable decisions and a return of four goals in 29 Premier League appearances hasn’t really cut the mustard. If Spurs can get their money back for a player who was actively pushing for a loan move away back in January, they might be wise to take that deal.
He’ll still have his suitors as it stands and may well be worth more than his wages one day, but Spurs need immediate results more than they need future potential and his sale would help them to spend more over the summer.
Radu Dragusin
In truth, the Romanian centre-back didn’t really look good enough for the Premier League even before an ACL injury sidelined him for much of the past year – this is a player who doesn’t quite do anything well enough for the top level of the game.
There appears to be interest from Serie A, with Inter Milan and AS Roma among a number of Italian teams tentatively linked with a bid, and if that interest crystalises into a firm offer then it’s hard to imagine that Spurs will turn it down – it’s worth noting that some reports suggested that a loan-to-buy deal had been agreed with Roma in January before it collapsed.
There are no particular indications that Roberto De Zerbi holds Drăgușin in much higher regard than his predecessors, and even if Romero and Van de Ven were to leave it’s hard to imagine Spurs working too hard to hold on to a player who has simply struggled to make the grade in England.
Guglielmo Vicario
Vicario made a promising start to his Spurs career but has been somewhat subpar over the last two seasons – not necessarily a remarkably bad goalkeeper, but one who makes too many mistakes, struggles too much with high balls and set pieces, and whose distribution isn’t quite strong enough to mark him down as the long-term answer at the back.
He’s a solid shot stopper, by any standards, but there’s more to being a goalkeeper and Vicario ends up being too close to the middle of the pack to justify working too keep him on board – especially when he seems to be angling for a transfer anyway.
Several Italian sides have been linked with a move to bring him back to his home country and there are plenty of signs to suggest that he’ll get his wish to go back to Serie A. Spurs are likely to go shopping for a new number one in a couple of months’ time, and that may not be such a bad thing. They can do better.
Manor Solomon
The Israeli winger never really broke into the first-team with any kind of conviction after he was signed from Shakhtar Donetsk back in 2023 and has spent the entirety of the last two years out on loan, most recently with Fiorentina. It’s probably high time that Spurs find him a permanent home.
Fiorentina do have a purchase option worth a reported £8.7m in their loan deal, which offers a likely and perhaps probable solution, but there have been few reports definitively stating that they will trigger it – Solomon has started eight league games since joining La Viola, scoring twice and playing reasonably well, so it seems plausible that it’s a move which will be made permanent.
Should Fiorentina decide to leave him be, however, Spurs will be back in the hunt for a buyer. His £60,000 per week wages aren’t too extortionate for the kind of teams who could offer him a home, so hopefully it’s a situation that will be resolved satisfactorily before the end of the window.
Pape Matar Sarr
Of the five players we’ve picked out, selling Sarr is certainly the least urgent. He’s still 23, still has time to blossom into the all-action player that he promised to be when he first arrived at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and still has an impressive work ethic to back his natural ability up. The problem is that he simply hasn’t levelled up as swiftly as might have been hoped.
Sarr certainly puts the hard yards in but there’s a worry that he’s turning into a jack of all trades and master of none. Neither his defensive work nor his passing game have stood out and he’s endured a rather mediocre season in which he’s started just 13 Premier League games. There’s a growing sensation that Spurs simply have better midfielders, and with Conor Gallagher, Rodrigo Bentancur, Lucas Bergvall and perhaps João Palhinha on the books for next season (relegation notwithstanding) it’s hard to say that Spurs really need the Senegalese midfielder.
Turkish sides Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have both come up as potential suitors on the rumour mill, so there could well be willing buyers – and if Spurs could get a substantial sum, then selling him to raise the funds required to strengthen other parts of the squad makes rather a lot of sense.