Tottenham Hotspur come into the January transfer window needing to vastly improve a squad that looks set to finish in the bottom half of the Premier League without any drastic changes to alter this course, even if one of those changes includes the firing of a severely disappointing Thomas Frank.
The first moves of the January window, though, are all going to be departures. Fabio Paratici is set to leave Spurs to become the Director of Football at Fiorentina, the worst team in Italy right now, in a huge shocker, while Brennan Johnson is poised to join London rivals Crystal Palace to bolster Oliver Glasner's attack.
And while Tottenham need to be accelerating any hopes at signing forwards like Yan Diomande, Etta Eyong, Savinho, and Omar Marmoush, it looks like more high profile exits from the current first team squad could be coming - even if they are not necessarily permanent losses.
Tottenham can't lose this baller
According to information from Alasdair Gold of Football.London, Tottenham Hotspur could loan out forward Mathys Tel and center back Kota Takai in the January transfer window, replacing those players with veterans for the squad to close the season while giving these two players more minutes.
To be honest, loaning both players would be a shock, especially Tel. Thomas Frank needs to be tried in court for the way he has treated Tel, who has been brilliant and certainly far beyond the horrible Richarlison. Tel has scored big goals and provided more dynamism and goal threat than the other options on the left wing, yet he rots on the bench because of an incompetent manager. Loaning him out with left wing as the biggest need in the squad would be idiotic, but, well, Gold is not wrong to float this idea from his info because this is exactly the sort of dumb move Spurs are famous for.
Now, Takai does have a more convoluted path to playing time than Tel, because his lack of minutes as a surprising new transfer from the Japanese top flight has less to do with Frank's incompetence and more to do with a legitimate logjam at center back.
But the thing is, if Tottenham are, as everyone fully expects, bound to sell Radu Dragusin to Serie A as he and his agent laughably complain about playing time shortly after the player returned from an ACL tear, then it makes little sense to lose even more depth by getting rid of Dragusin and Takai, even on loan, in the same winter transfer window.