Thomas Frank said he would not sign "players who don't want to be here" after Eberechi Eze's U turn which left him on the verge of joining boyhood club Arsenal instead of Tottenham.
Although the Spurs boss refused to name individuals, his telling comments came barely 24 hours after Eze decided against joining the club in favour of moving to their north London rivals Arsenal from Crystal Palace.
As far back as last weekend, there had been suggestions Eze would not be involved in Palace's season opener at Chelsea as talks with Spurs progressed, and despite starting and seeing a goal ruled out at Stamford Bridge a deal was agreed between the two clubs earlier this week.
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That alerted Arsenal, who had enquired about the 27-year-old earlier this summer, to reignite their interest and steal an 11th-hour march on their biggest rivals, with the England winger undergoing a medical at London Colney on Friday.
Frank has made a reputation of never mentioning potential targets by name but when pressed on his frustration on missing out on another summer target, having already failed to sign Nottingham Forest's Morgan Gibbs-White, he said: "There's been a lot of rumours - and a lot of times where there's nothing in it. There must be someone out there who thinks it's good fun to put the rumours out there.
"There's been a lot of links and will continue to be. To be very general, I don't want any players who don't want to come to the club.
"If they don't want to come here and wear this fantastic badge, we don't want them here. That's very clear, and I imagine the fans feel exactly the same.
"That's a key message."
Frank confident of further incomings
Despite their disappointment so far this summer, bringing in only two new faces in Joao Palhinha and Mohammed Kudus, Frank said he remained confident more arrivals would be forthcoming in the final 10 days of the transfer window.
He said: "Of course, we want to do everything we can to be competitive. We have six very good front players who will be very competitive across all the competitions - and (Dejan) Kulusevski will come back this season, it's probably longer-term with (James) Maddison unfortunately.
"I'm confident though that we will sign another player before the end of the window. In general, any club wants to sign players as early as possible. If it was that easy, everyone would do it.
"I'm a positive guy, I'm not that fearful. I believe something will happen. I know the club is asking extremely hard, and unfortunately we can't go in Waitrose for five minutes and buy two very good players. It's a bit more complicated than that.
"I see the club is working hard, Daniel, Vinay and Johan - we're all on board in terms of being on board to see how we can improve."
Will Richarlison stay at Spurs?
Richarlison had been mentioned as a potential makeweight in any deal for Eze, despite the Brazilian starting both of Spurs' two games so far - and scoring a superb double in the 3-0 win over Burnley last weekend.
Whatver the reason behind those reports of his impending departure, Frank gave his own public backing to the forward when asked about his situation at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
"Right now, Richarlison is my starting No 9," he said. "He scored two fantastic goals, had two fantastic games and is the Brazil No 9.
"He's a fantastic player, he wants to stay, I want to keep him and there's been no talks about anything else."