Tottenham should consider a squad reset ahead of next season, and a big sale should spark it.
Sign up to our LondonWorld Today newsletter
Sign up
Thank you for signing up!
Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to LondonWorld, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you.
Submitting...
Tottenham should consider making two major deals to reset the balance of their squad. Spurs are in the midst of another forgettable Premier League campaign, currently in 14th place and not looking particularly likely to qualify for Europe.
European qualification is not out of the question, with Tottenham only six points off seventh place, but given their form currently, six points looks too big a gap to make up.
Thomas Frank will be desperate to turn things around over the coming weeks, and he might have to if he wants to keep his job amid building pressure. It could be the second straight season Spurs finish outside the European spots if Frank doesn’t turn it around, with Ange Postecoglou also failing domestically with this team last season.
But when different managers get the same results, big questions need to be asked about the group of players. There is no doubting that Spurs need a culture reset, and Frank is supposed to be enacting that, but it may take significant departures to actually pull it off.
Ultimately, a quicker path to a culture reset could be to replace players than try to change those players, and there could be a good opportunity to do that this season.
Spurs could cash in and reset
Micky van de Ven is not the problem at Tottenham, let’s get that straight. He is one of the best players on this team and one of the most hard-working players to boot. But the Dutchman does carry huge value in the transfer market, and therefore the opportunity to cash in on the defender should not be ignored.
According to reports this week, Liverpool are now showing interest in van de Ven as they look to replace Ibrahima Konate, who is out of contract this summer. Spurs have a reported asking price of £88million for their star defender, and that’s a price tag they could stick to when selling to a Premier League rival.
That big money could then be used towards various new signings, and van de Ven could be replaced by signing the outgoing Konate from Liverpool for free this summer, albeit with a big wage being demanded.
That’s a unique opportunity to raise huge money towards a squad reset and replace the outgoing player with another very good player without spending anything on transfer fees. Losing van de Ven would be a gut-punch, no doubt, and Konate is a different type of centre-back, but no squad reset is easy.
This could be a case of taking a step back to take a number of steps forward, and that may well be necessary. What Spurs are doing currently just isn’t working, and however they go about it, they seem to come back to the same place.
There needs to be a radical move, significant change and a bold statement. Spurs fans have seen enough from a big chunk of this squad - and that’s not to say everyone must go, that’s not realistic - but a handful of key departures and a changing of the guard when it comes to the core of this squad may be the club’s best chance of achieving significant progress.