Here's Part 1 and Part 2
We're drawing near to the end of the international break, and that means an end to this three-part series aiming to make sense of Tottenham Hotspur's performance in the transfer market and performance on the pitch, both this season and over the last few years. Diving into the data^, what are some of the conclusions we can draw from Spurs' transfer activity of late?
Are Spurs really that BAD at transfers?
In Part 2, we took a look at the efficacy of Spurs' recent strategy, as well as how Spurs have tended to invest in talent, with Spurs often seeing a poor return on said investment: both on the pitch and financially. Let's delve into that more and understand just where the Spurs front office's strengths and weaknesses lie when it comes to both recruiting and offloading players.
^ Data for this piece cover senior player incomings and outgoings in summer windows only; whether a player is considered a senior player or not is determined by Transfermarkt; promotions from youth teams are not included. Additionally, loan to buy deals are treated as just that: loans, and I have tracked free outgoing transfers and player releases separately… but more on that later. Basically, the idea was to compare apples with apples wherever possible.
Do Spurs offload players at the wrong time?
This is an interesting one. Knowing when to sell is key to continually improving your squad, and it's easy for Spurs fans to remember a time when Dele Alli was worth a reported £100 million, only for him to eventually leave for… nothing. There was something of an argument to be made that perhaps sentimentality had an oversized influence on Spurs' selling, though that now seems to have changed. Instead, Spurs' selling activity now seems to be limited more by the quality of player Spurs have on the books (thanks, poor recruitment) rather than an unwillingness to sell. At least, that's what many would say.
What do the data say?
Transfer Sale Performance: Fee-generating exit rate vs sales recovery, with total outgoings
Actually, while Spurs aren't great, they could be a lot worse.
Over the last five seasons, Spurs have received a fee on 62.5% of the players that have exited the club; solidly better than Liverpool's 55.9%; and for every € spent, Spurs made back 36.4% from sales, better than Arsenal's 32.4%. Manchester City are far and away the best club in this respect, aided by an off-the-charts 24/25 offseason (and ya know, the cheating).
In this respect, it was a positive 26/27 window for Spurs as well: recovering around 45% of their spend and despite the relative exodus of ten players, the Lilywhites managed to collect fees on 80% of them. As a point of comparison, nine players left the club during the summer of 24/25, with Spurs making back 36.4% vs sales, but releasing four of those for no fee; not a great return. For those who might need reminding, that was Johan Lange's first summer at the club: an auspicious start.
Why are Spurs (and other clubs) releasing players?
That takes us to the drivers of the above sale performance. Often, clubs don't get a fee for a player. Sometimes, that's a very young player who wants out for more opportunities. That's not necessarily a negative: as we often say on this very site, youth development is a crapshoot. Remember when Reo Griffiths, who was lighting things up at U18 level, refused to sign a professional contract and went to Lyon? He is now playing in the Isthmian League South East Division – and I swear that is not a recurrently generated league. So no big loss there. In general, though, it's not ideal seeing young players leave for nothing; it's just not typically the worst-case scenario.
At the other end of the spectrum, players often choose to retire at a club. Sure, there's an argument that there's a missed financial opportunity there, but sometimes there's more to life than £££, and it's often really heartwarming seeing a player see out his days at a club and make a graceful exit (though sometimes Father Time comes hard and with a vengeance as form drops off a cliff (looking at you Michel Vorm, though there's probably a couple of players I could have listed here).
What you really don't want happening is peak-age players leaving the club for no fee: those between the age of 24 and 29. For those players to leave on a free, something's likely gone horribly wrong either on the pitch or off it, and it generally represents a failure by the club to recoup some of what they've invested into a player and invest that into a replacement.
So which clubs fare well in these metrics? To help, here are some more data, this time normalized, covering released players vs outgoing transfers, with released players defined as those leaving on a free transfer, released by the club, retiring, or leaving for a "?" transfer fee (which I believe is only one player in our dataset).
Transfer Release Impact: Outgoing vs released (and retired) players, by age bracket
Again, Spurs are not the worst side here. Liverpool have actually had about 44% of their outgoings leave on frees over the last five years; 21% though have been in the older bracket, with a number of players retiring at Liverpool. Liverpool have also had the same proportion of peak-age players exit, again the highest of the four clubs in the dataset.
Even though Spurs do measure better than Liverpool on both of these measures, what is a little worrying is the proportion of peak-age players plus the younger age bracket leaving the club for free: a quarter of the players leaving Spurs over the last five years fall within that bracket, the highest of the four clubs. The other point of concern is the number of peak-age players that have left from 24/25 onwards: again, when Johan Lange joined the club. That's something that his hard to fully pin on the Dane, however, given many of these departing players were recruited under previous regimes; but you also can't say he is blameless when it comes to failing to secure a fee for the likes of Ryan Sessegnon or Sergio Reguilon (though for the latter, the player also reportedly should take a share of the blame).
The most recent summer was much more impressive: only two of Spurs' ten outgoings failed to receive a fee, and only one of those was a peak-age player.
So are Spurs bad at selling?
Not really!
Again, let's take a look at the data. For this visual, transfer income has been compared to Transfermarkt's market value for the outgoing players. Retirees have been treated as having a market value of €0.
Outgoing players vs market value
And Spurs actually come out of this looking pretty good!
Out of the four clubs, only Manchester City has come out ahead of their Transfermarkt market value over the last five years when selling players (who says cheating never pays, at least in the short term); but Spurs are the next best club across the same time period. Now the market value of the players Spurs are selling is the lowest, indicating that perhaps Spurs haven't quite maximized the possible profit, but it's also important to remember that Spurs have also spent the least per player of the four clubs.
Arsenal are hilariously poor in this respect, returning €323 million from player exits worth €530 million, and Liverpool aren't much better. Spurs' worst window once more was the 24/25 summer, bringing in only around €56 million vs a potential €91 million (and you may start to feel a little sorry for Ange Postecoglou given what he would have had to work with reading these numbers).
All in all, though, when it comes to sales, Spurs definitely don't seem to be as terrible as they are sometimes made out to be.
Are Spurs bad at transfers?
There's your journey through the transfer window by the numbers. It's been a mixed time of late for Spurs, and a fascinating window: an impressive number of deals put through with mixed results and a muddled strategy: increasing the age of the squad by some amount and perhaps spreading their transfer budget around too much, while the focus on Premier League players seems to indicate a lack of recruitment capability.
A lot of the ongoing critiques, however, lack merit. Spurs' net spend was lower than some of the other big clubs, yet despite this their outlay seems to be used as a point of heavy criticism, without even taking into account the fact it's arguably too early to judge the success of the window until the players have had more time to gel on the pitch.
The other regular point of criticism is Spurs' inability to sell, but that also seems to be largely unfounded, though it appears Johan Lange hasn't helped things here (though Rafi Moersen potentially has).
Are Spurs BAD at transfers? Not really. They're just not great at it; and when against clubs with greater resources, greatness is probably what is required to secure an elusive Premier League trophy.
Or just cook the books. Either way apparently works.