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For most of the summer 2025 transfer window, then RB Leipzig star attacking midfielder Xavi Simons appeared to be very close to a move to Chelsea. It was only in the end of the battle that Chelsea seemed to drag their feet, leading Tottenham Hotspur to swoop in out of nowhere and sign him as a Plan B after the awful Morgan Gibbs-White saga in which Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis unprofessionally blocked the transfer of a player on a valid release clause.

Simons, in the end, was then really a Plan C option to Eberechi Eze as well. Eze, a local London hero who had just won the FA Cup as the clear star of a Michael Olise less Crystal Palace attack, was set to join Tottenham. At the last second, childhood club Arsenal sealed his signature with a slightly sweeter offer to the Eagles, leaving Spurs holding the bag.

Tottenham came away from the entire ordeal actually being happy with their catch. Simons turned out to be cheaper than the other options and is even younger. In theory, he had even more upside despite not being proven at the Premier League level.

Xavi Simons was poor vs. Liverpool

But after another poor performance that came with a red card as a cherry on top, Chelsea and Arsenal have to be looking at the Simons transfer and thinking that they came out on top. It's not like their alternatives, Alejandro Garnacho and Eze, have been totally lighting it up either, but Garnacho's Carabao Cup displays and Eze's menacing hat trick in the embarrassing Spurs North London Derby defeat both outweight Simons's minimal production.

Obviously, Simons has not been helped by Thomas Frank, the tactics, the overall setup, or players around him like Richarlison this season. But he has to take some accountability for his struggles, especially since he is one of the very few 60 million pound transfers in the history of the Spurs.

Simons has just two truly great games all season long, and they were against bottom feeders in Brentford and West Ham in games Spurs dominated. But Simons is not elevating the team in more difficult games, and against opponents like Liverpool, Manchester United, and both Chelsea and Arsenal off the bench, he is a non factor. And he just held his team back against the Reds. Simons has to do more in the big games, otherwise Arsenal and Chelsea will not regret missing out one bit.

Tottenham Hotspur supporters are hoping for one more marquee attacking addition in the January transfer window. Spurs brought in Randal Kolo Muani on loan, as well as both Xavi Simons and Mohammed Kudus, to beef up their attack in the summer transfer window, and while it has been a bit of a bumpy road for Simons and Kolo Muani (for various reasons), they have proven to be assets to Spurs. And Kudus has been indispensable, easily one of the best signings of the summer by any Premier League franchise.

But Tottenham still have a major goals problem, which is to be expected when players of the caliber of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min have left the club in recent succession. By and large, Spurs fans want to see the club go after a goal scoring left winger this winter to help fill the biggest void in the side.

The problem is that the dream transfer target, Antoine Semenyo, does not seem interested at all in joining Tottenham, which comes as no surprise to the smartly cynical Spurs fans, who had already noted his childhood affinity for Arsenal FC.

An Antoine Semenyo alternative

Tottenham now have to pivot to Semenyo alternatives, and there is no name spoken about more than Savinho, who was strongly on Spurs transfer radar in August. Savinho was their top winger transfer target at the end of the transfer window, but Manchester City were unwilling to part ways with the Brazilian star, especially with Rodrygo Goes not coming the other way from Real Madrid.

In an appearance on the NBC Sports broadcast of Aston Villa vs. Manchester United, The Athletic's David Ornstein reported, via The Spurs Watch, that while Tottenham Hotspur have been rejected by Antoine Semenyo, they remain strongly interested in Savinho from Manchester City. They could reportedly make another move for the Brazilian standout this winter transfer window after their failed approach in the summer stanza.

Savinho has barely featured for Man City this season with just four Premier League starts, and he has honestly been pretty terrible in them, too. But Savinho has been very good in the Champions League, including a dazzling performance off the bench against Real Madrid in which he cooked up a previously dominant Alvaro Carreras.

The problem with Savinho is that he is left footed and best on the right wing, and he is also more of a creative winger like Mohammed Kudus. It is not a direct fit for what Spurs need in terms of goals on the left like an Antoine Semenyo or even an Ademola Lookman would provide.

Thomas Frank has bought himself no favor with Tottenham Hotspur supporters in the past month. The loss to Arsenal in the North London Derby will simply not be washed off the palate that easily, and Spurs fans were only sickened even more by the 3-0 drubbing at the hands of an otherwise unimpressive Nottingham Forest side.

This past weekend, Tottenham lost again 2-1 to Liverpool, and while Frank avoided another hefty dose of criticism by virtue of the two red cards that muddied the game, it is truly hard to say that there has been any tangible improvement from Spurs under this failing manager.

And what incenses Spurs supporters even more is his treatment of some of the team's most promising players, and, right now, there is no situation Spurs fans are taking greater umbrage with than the incessant benching of potential breakout star Mathys Tel.

Mathys Tel is fully COYS

The former Bayern Munich man has been COYS from day one, and he has scored some important goals this season as a striker, too. Tel was vital against Leeds United and then Manchester United off the bench, and when he does play, even when it is as a substitute, he shows a real spark and a level of class above that of his teammates athletically and in his desire to get after goal.

And yet, Thomas Frank has inexplicably left Mathys Tel on the bench in every Premier League game since Oct. 19 against Aston Villa. That means it has been more than two months since Tel last started in the league, even though he has literally been playing well and showing a lot more short term and long term value than schlubs like Richarlison.

Tottenham fans are growing tired of the same excuses, the same tired lineups, and the weekly cowardice exhibited by Frank. He left Tel to rot on the bench again in the loss to Liverpool, only bringing the Frenchman on for peanuts in the previous game against Nottingham Forest for 10 minuts with Spurs already dead to rights. And nothing, not even a second on the pitch, in the loss to Liverpool with nine men out there.

This is not how you treat rising stars. Tel has done literally everything right and holds a lot more long term value to this club than Richarlison, who ideally will not be in the squad at all when the 2026/27 season kicks off. As Spurs think about signing a new winger, maybe they should actually give Tel a dang chance.

Tottenham Hotspur supporters are itching for the club to make the sort of big, serious transfer moves that an organization that is serious about winning trophies even bigger than the Europa League title would make. Spurs like to sell their fans on the story that this is what they are after, and they have been doing an especially hard job of selling that dream to supporters after canning Daniel Levy.

But after not adding a top left winger or striker to the side to replace the goals vacated by prime Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, Tottenham are left with an attack that is almost entirely carried by Randal Kolo Muani and Mohammed Kudus.

Looking ahead to the January transfer window, Spurs supporters were slightly getting their hopes up for Bournemouth star left winger Antoine Semenyo, who has raised his cachet significantly with a sick start to the 2025/26 Premier League season. And with a 65 million pound release clause, the excuse of price can not be made for the Ghanaian international, who won't even miss AFCON this year either.

David Ornstein drops the hammer

But unfortunately, Tottenham Hotspur seem to have slipped out of the heated transfer battle for Semenyo entirely, with Liverpool, Manchester United, and Manchester City now seemingly the last men standing for the Bournemouth man.

In an appearance on the NBC Sports broadcast during Sunday's coverage of Manchester United vs. Aston Villa, top transfer insider David Ornstein reported, via Spurs Zone, that the issue with Tottenham not signing Antoine Semenyo is not financial. Per Ornstein, Spurs were very interested in Semenyo and were indeed ready to meet his wage demands, but he basically politely told them no thank you, I will be looking elsewhere.

Basically, Spurs, as with Bryan Mbeumo and Rayan Cherki this past summer transfer window, got rejected by Manchester United and Manchester City for a top transfer target. That only solidifies Spurs standing as being a step below the other Big Six clubs, to the point where you wonder if their consistently poor performances in the Premier League have permanently placed them below the others, even as they literally beat Man United in the Europa League Final.

Tottenham are going to have to go back to the drawing board with Semenyo now fully in the rearview mirror, and now you had better believe that the mumblings of a move for a player like Manchester City stars Savinho and Omar Marmoush will increase.

Tottenham Hotspur have a young, ascending midfield at their disposal with breakout stars like Archie Gray, Pape Matar Sarr, and Lucas Bergvall all inching towards taking that next big step in their careers and becoming among the best overall midfielders in the entire Premier League.

Spurs also have two veterans in Rodrigo Bentancur and Joao Palhinha who, while not starting caliber, have proven useful in rotational roles against certain opponents. But there are still some fans who would like to see more upgrades in the middle of the park.

Obviously, Tottenham should be looking for long term solutions who have the potential to be world class for years to come, and there would be no better addition than a young, talented anchoring midfielder. Adam Wharton definitely springs to mind there.

A Rodrigo Bentancur replacement?

But there are some Spurs fans who would like to see a certain reunion of a Premier League star from the Saudi Pro League to beef up the midfield and add additional technical quality, deep lying playmaking, and even goal scoring to replace the uninspiring Bentancur as the veteran leader in the middle of the park.

That experienced former Premier League midfielder would be none other than former Wolves star Ruben Neves, who has a catalogue of goals that would even make Kevin De Bruyne's eyes water. Neves has been quietly showing legitimate interest in returning to the most marquee league in world football, having shown that he is far from finished in the Saudi Pro League.

According to a new report from Simon Stone of BBC Sport, Ruben Neves would be willing to take less wages than what he is making in the Saudi Pro League to move to the Premier League, which jibes with previous reporting from other journalists in England that the former Wolves man is eyeing a big return.

Manchester United are the most concretely linked big club, as they have a serious midfield crisis with the likes of Casemiro still remaining important to the cause. But a lot of Tottenham Hotspur supporters have been openly discussing the possibility of signing Neves - and a few have even been clamoring for him.

If Neves is willing to take a significant wage cut to something reasonable, then it actually makes sense for Tottenham to at least have a conversation about him. He is obviously going to be nowhere near the star he was for Wolves, but at 28 years old, Neves is far from finished. Neves has more skill than Bentancur and certainly can do more in posession than Palhinha.

As with anything related to Tottenham Hotspur, whenever fans are having optimistic thoughts about who is coming in and who could shake things up in the club in a positive manner, the rug is pulled from underneath them and the shake up is really at their expense.

For the most part, Tottenham fans have been looking forward to the January 2026 transfer market with dreams of bagging Antoine Semenyo as the much needed goal scoring upgrade at a left wing position vacated by club legend Son Heung-min this summer transfer window.

And even if Spurs were to miss out on Semenyo, which seems highly likely at this point, there are other possibilities like Manchester City star Savinho, who, like Semenyo, was already a transfer target of Tottenham's this past summer.

Tottenham are having an uncomfortable conversation

But now, instead of talking about the next winger to join Mohammed Kudus and the rest of the gang, Tottenham are having to prepare for life without Fabio Paratici, just months after the former Juventus executive returned to Spurs - and even brought in Randal Kolo Muani to somewhat salvage the striker position for a season.

Paratici has been closely linked with the Fiorentina job, as the Viola hope the Italian executive can save one of the country's historic clubs from relegation. Even though they just scored a big win on Sunday, they are still at real threat of going down, ranked last in the Serie A table.

According to the latest transfer news from Fabrizio Romano, Fabio Paratici is getting even closer to joining Fiorentina. Per Fab, Fiorentina are now ready to "advance and seal" a deal for the sporting director, whom they reportedly offered a five year contract to. Romano reports that Paratici would be Fiorentina's new Head of Football. While a deal is not official between both parties and "formal steps" still need to be completed here, an agreement is "closer" to getting done and Fiorentina remain "confident" that they will seal this major signing.

There are few bigger losses than parting ways with a top executive, especially in the middle of a difficult season. What may be making Paratici abandon ship to the literal worst team in Serie A right now should concern Tottenham Hotspur fans, and it may even be seen as a vote of distrust in Thomas Frank, who has done a very shoddy job of managing this team. Losing Paratici certainly won't help matters from a player recruitment standpoint.

There have been several recurring themes of criticism directed at manager Thomas Frank by Tottenham Hotspur fans. He plays too passively. He sets his teams up cowardly. He loses too many games. He does not support the fans. He throws young players under the bus. He trusts the same mediocre veterans in the starting lineup over more qualified, higher upside youngsters. He isn't ready to manage a big club.

But all the while, Frank is quietly making some positive adjustments and listening to both the feedback he hears from the fans and the obvious results of what is laid out before him on the pitch. For example, Archie Gray is getting more minutes in midfield, as is his young partner Lucas Bergvall.

On the flip side, Frank is phasing out veterans who are not producing, including those Spurs supporters were worried he is favoring. They have been asking for Rodrigo Bentancur to get fewer minutes than Gray going forward, and even though he started the season brilliantly, Tottenham fans have also been quietly turning on Joao Palhinha.

Thomas Frank is adjusting

And Frank has also quietly obliged. Palhinha did not start for Tottenham against Liverpool, and that now makes it four straight games without a start for the Portuguese midfielder. Even though Spurs are not getting the best results with loses to Forest and Liverpool, they did beat Brentford and Slavia Praha and genuinely look better in midfield with Gray and Bergvall than they did with Palhinha and Bentancur.

On the surface, Palhinha is a good player. He is an amazing defensive player in terms of winning the ball and breaking up play. But he is so bad on the ball. He cannot pass progressively, he cannot run or dribble with the ball, and he offers no threat going forward other than fluke goals. Palhinha defensively makes tackles but also disrupts the structure with his playing style.

Tottenham were initially loving the Palhinha move with how many tackles and defensive interventions he was racking up, but credit to Frank for slowly but surely adjusting and realizing that he is offering nothing anywhere else and those tackles are not amounting to real transitive ball possession and chances going the other way because he is so negative on the ball. It is a change that is probably lurking under the radar in the mainstream, but Palhinha is now way low on the depth chart after his hot start to the campaign.

There are not many things to be positive about when it comes to Tottenham Hotspur in the 2025/26 Premier League season. Although they put together a wonderful final 20 minutes, it was too little too late, and the excuses about the red cards will wear thin to Spurs supporters who simply see the 2-1 loss to Liverpool as yet another example of their beloved club getting outplayed and outclassed.

It was not half as embarrassing as the 4-1 loss to Arsenal or the 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest the previous weekend, but if the bar is set at a loss cushioned by a couple of controversial red cards, then that is a bar beneath the most rat infested of gutters for a team that supposedly sold its fan base on competing for Premier League and Champions League trophies before the season started.

But all is not bad for Tottenham. That's because there are young, burgeoning talents in this side who are showing that they can be the future of the Premier League. Archie Gray, in particular, has been a real bright spot in the middle of the park this season, shining whenever Thomas Frank has given him opportunities to the point where the England international is now one of the first names on the team sheet.

Thomas Frank should listen to himself, too

Curiously, Thomas Frank gave Gray some advice that, while good and true to how the midfielder plays and should play, comes off as a bit hypocritical and a way of setting Gray up to fail when looking at the broader context of what Frank is doing at Tottenham.

See if you can find the fatal flaw in Frank's advice for Archie Gray, as relayed by the former Leeds United standout himself prior to the Tottenham loss to Liverpool. Gray said, via AllThings_THFC, “He wants me to play forward as much as possible, that’s the main thing. We’ve got a certain structure, and I’ve got a role in the system. We have two pivots and sometimes I’ll have the licence to get into the box. The main message before games is to be positive. Play forward, run forward, be as positive as you can.”

That "structure" Gray is referencing is clearly a losing one. It is terrible and is holding back Gray from being the guy who can play bravely and push the team forward, which is evidently what Frank wants. But see, Gray can not do what Frank wants because the entire team is not set up in that way. Gray is doing great things and the best he can with what he is given, but maybe Frank needs to take the advice he is giving to Gray and use it for himself and the other players in the side like, say, Rodrigo Bentancur.

Time and time again, Tottenham Hotspur have proven to their fans that while they can occasionally sign a top target like Mohammed Kudus or Xavi Simons who can star for the team, they can never sign the truly elite transfer targets that all the other powerhouse clubs in the Premier League and abroad want to sign.

Once the clubs start lining up for a player and get serious about throwing around big money, wages, or an appealing sporting project, Tottenham completely fade out of the race. It happened last year with Desire Doue who went on to win the Champions League with PSG, it happened this past summer with Bryan Mbeumo and Rayan Cherki who are both now flying high for their respective Manchester clubs, and it is about to happen again in the January 2026 transfer window.

Tottenham need attacking help more badly than any other top team in the Premier League right now, because they are just not scoring enough goals. The left wing position, in particular, has been highlighted as a prime need for the club, and with Antoine Semenyo available at a 65 million pround release clause, there is no more obvious connecting of the two dots than these ones.

Tottenham are falling off

Problematically, Tottenham are almost completely falling out of the Semenyo transfer race all of a sudden. Once mentioned as prime candidates to sign Semenyo alongside the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, and Manchester City, Spurs have now faded out of the picture in the span of just one week.

The latest transfer insider to leave Tottenham Hotspur out of the proceedings is Give Me Sport journalist Ben Jacobs. A breakout star of the transfer reporting world, Jacobs writes that there are "two frontrunners" in the Antoine Semenyo transfer battle, and those two clubs are Manchester United and Manchester City - not Tottenham.

Liverpool are also out of it now, it seems, but they already spent a ton of money on Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, and Hugo Ekitike last summer. Tottenham bought Simons and Kudus, but they did not actually spend real money on a goal scorer; their only legitimate short term move was signing Randal Kolo Muani on loan, which was a bare minimum necessity.

Tottenham are now getting crushed again by Manchester United on the transfer market. Losing to Man City is nothing new, but getting pipped again and again by the team they beat in the Europa League Final has to be demoralizing to a different degree.

There are a number of players Tottenham Hotspur fans are getting increasingly fed up with during the course of this dismally disappointing 2025/26 Premier League season in which Spurs continue to look more like a bottom half of the table side than a top four contender in English football.

Richarlison and Rodrigo Bentancur are two players Tottenham could have sold last summer, but, well, Spurs didn't really sell anyone other than Bryan Gil - not even Yves Bissouma and Manor Solomon. The last of those two names will obviously be on the shopping block this coming January transfer window, but there are a number of Spurs fans hoping for a more successful and competent name to join them, too.

Goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario is actually one of the best pure shot stoppers in all of European football, but the Italian netminder is quite poor at everything else. His distribution, ball security, handling, reading of crosses, and leadership have all drawn bitter criticisms from the Spurs fan base, even as manager Thomas Frank continues to publicly and privately defend a goalkeeper who has cost his team many points in the Premier League this season.

Tottenham could still switch up later

Ahead of transfer rumors that James Trafford could be available over at Manchester City for a January switch, there were rumblings among Spurs supporters that Vicario could be axed next month so that Spurs could then sign a younger and better keeper in Trafford, who had just made a big switch in the summer transfer window from Burnley to Manchester City.

However, according to a report from Matt Law of the Daily Telegraph, Tottenham Hotspur actually currently have "no plans" to sell Guglielmo Vicario in the January transfer window. Although Thomas Frank would like the former Empoli star to improve his distribution, Spurs are not ready to part ways with the experiened shot stopper just yet.

Now, that does jibe with previous reporting from other Tottenham writers, and the common refrain is that Vicario won't be on the chopping block just yet, but he could be sold in the summer 2026 transfer window if a better goalkeeper is available - and, of course, if Vic continues to be unconvincing with his all around play.

Tottenham need to start seeing more accountability and consistency from Vicario. In order to compete with clubs like Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester City at the top of the table, Spurs need a goalkeeper like those guys do; someone who they can rely on and who won't throw games away with sloppy errors.