Tottenham Hotspur head coach Thomas Frank has said that they will not sign a new centre-back before the transfer window closes.
The Athletic reported on August 5 that Spurs wanted to add another defender to their squad to provide back-up to first-choice centre-backs Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero. Van de Ven missed a large chunk of last season with a hamstring injury while Romero struggled with toe and quad issues.
Radu Dragusin is recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament injury which he suffered in January. The Romania international should start training with his team-mates again in the next couple of weeks but he will be slowly eased back into competitive action.
Spurs signed Kota Takai from Japanese side Kawasaki Frontale in July but he has not played yet due to a foot injury while 18-year-old Luka Vuskovic has been allowed to join Hamburg on a season-long loan. It means Kevin Danso is the only fit alternative to Van de Ven and Romero.
“We have right now three centre backs: Micky, Romero, Danso and Ben (Davies) can play there if necessary,” Frank said ahead of Spurs’ game against Bournemouth on Saturday. “We have Kota the young central defender we bought this summer and is running now and training with the team next week. There’s not many left behind. And then Dragusin is coming back in a couple of months (to playing games) so that should be enough.”
Frank was then directly asked if they needed to sign another defender.
“Not as it stands, no,” the 51-year-old said.
Spurs confirmed the signing of the Netherlands international Xavi Simons from RB Leipzig on Friday while full-back Destiny Udogie has returned to full fitness after a knee injury. However, they suffered from a crippling injury crisis during the 2024-25 campaign which disrupted their progress in the Premier League under then head coach Ange Postecoglou.
Frank has tried to carefully manage the squad since he replaced Postecoglou on a three-year contract in June. For example, he named Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur on the bench for their 3-0 victory over Burnley but they both started last weekend’s 2-0 win against Manchester City.
Is Tottenham’s squad big enough to cope with the Premier League and the Champions League?
“The perfect picture, unfortunately it’s not often perfect, is that you have 20 players plus three (goalkeepers),” Frank said. “Two in each position. All of them robust. Of course you get injuries. And then you probably don’t need 20 top players because they also need the balance of getting enough minutes to feed their ego, where they are in the stage of their career. So that’s the perfect scenario but it’s not often you get that.
“We had too many injuries last year. You can’t get around that. Hopefully we solve the problem with the process we put in place. That can help. But we need to be aware there is a long season, hopefully with 60-plus games so we need to be good enough at building the players, rotating at the right time, which is an art and very difficult, and good enough to have the right amount of players. You can’t have too many because that’s also not good.”
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