Dr. Strangelove or justification for Pochettino's penchant for pinching pennies
With the summer transfer window in full swing, Premier League clubs are going all out to sign their top targets. No club is holding back - Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea have all spent more than £100m so far. Liverpool are ready to break their club record for Naby Keita. Even Everton are on a spending spree.
But there's one team that are yet to make a move - Tottenham Hotspur. Having finished second last season, they have sold Kyle Walker for £50m to Manchester City and are yet to add a player to their squad.
If you look at the last couple of seasons, Spurs have tended to complete their transfer business towards the end of the window. In the previous summer window, the club signed Sissoko from Newcastle for £30m in the dying hours of deadline day.
Prior to that, the club, in various seasons, signed Son for £22m, Lloris for £11.8m, Lamela for £25.7m and Dempsey for £6m, all of them towards the end of the respective windows.
It is believed that some clubs wait for the last few days of the window in the hope that the transfer fees would plummet. However, it is important to note that leaving a deal until the last minute could make it very, very difficult to complete.
Jon Smith, a football agent, told BBC: "The luxury of doing a deal like Kyle Walker in July is you have the time. It's not pressurised. Although you are dealing with people's lives, because the deals are quite complex, it's much easier to put things to the side and deal with them one by one.
"If you have three days to go and five deals sloshing around, it's very difficult. There are two opposites at play. If you have a deal that's not really coming together, the end of the transfer window does focus everyone's attention. You have to put your foot on the gas or take your foot off the accelerator."
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Tottenham have been linked with Ross Barkley this summer. However, the player is demanding wages of £150k per-week. That would make him the highest paid player at the club.
So is it time for Spurs to break their wage structure to attract more players?
Jermaine Jenas, Match of the Day pundit, had earlier stated that the wage structure at Spurs could influence their players to join big spending clubs.
"When I go through the Tottenham team, some of them are already good enough to play for Barcelona or Real Madrid, so you have to start treating them like players of that calibre, or you will lose them," said the former Spurs player.
Smith, however, did not agree with Jenas. "They [Spurs] are on a mission and the atmosphere in the club is sensational. There is a great team spirit, and that plays to somebody, that's real," he said.
He added, "Now is not the time to start breaking structures. If you believe in the club, and believe in where they are going, the bonuses will be higher."
With Spurs set to play their home games at Wembley, it is unlikely that they will break their wage structure this season. Another issue which they would have to address is the fact that they do not have a good record at Wembley. The Lilywhites were unbeaten in the league at home while playing at White Hart Lane, however, they lost to Chelsea, Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen at Wembley.
Let us now go back to the 1990s era. Remember the 'Class of 92' consisting of David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes, Gary and Phil Neville and Ryan Giggs; Spurs are currently in a similar scenario.
In the 'Class of 92', Manchester United had the best youth players integrated into their system. Similarly, Spurs have now emerged as a breeding ground for young talent.
Dele Alli, bought from MK Dons, has won the Professional Footballers' Association Young Player of the Year award in the last two seasons. Another youth product, Harry Kane was the Premier League's top scorer in the last two seasons. The club have more youth players being integrated into the first team every year. Who knows, we might see another Kane emerge this year.
According to Sky Andrew, a football agent, Spurs do not have to spend big this summer. He told BBC Sport: "What Spurs have done is similar to what Manchester United did in the Beckham and Neville era- transforming young players into great players."
More clubs need to follow Spurs' model of developing young talent. In a world where transfer fees are skyrocketing, the Londoners are doing a wonderful job in developing their young players. Football is not all about winning; it is also about developing and nurturing youngsters and giving them the platform to express themselves and this where Spurs lead the rest of the clubs.
Meanwhile, manager Mauricio Pochettino was not too concerned with the quiet nature of the transfer window. "We are so calm and so quiet because we have belief in our youth from the academy. We may lack a few players, but we are so calm because I think we have a very good team and the most important for us always is the team," he said in an interview with ESPN.
Also read: For the sake of belief, we should hope that Tottenham Hotspur win the Premier League
What I believe is that Tottenham have the money to invest but are not willing to splash the cash needlessly. They have a different philosophy than the other clubs. They do not believe in spending crazy money on a single player. Rather, they feel that spending on the right player is the way to go.
"My view is that it's totally unsustainable. I'm not sure if that's the view of the other Premier League clubs, but certainly, the prices that are being paid for the other PL players, I can't see it being sustainable in the long term. We've managed the club, we think, in a very appropriate way," Levy said while Spurs were on a pre-season tour in the United States.
The biggest achievement for Tottenham so far in this transfer window is that no big clubs have come calling for their players apart from Walker.
The depth in the squad remains an issue. Sure, the players are very good. But convincing players from bigger clubs to come to Spurs and sit on the bench would be difficult. However, an alternative must be found or else Spurs could have a repeat of last season where they were knocked out in the Champions League group stage, defeated in the FA Cup semi-finals and finished runners-up in the league yet again.
Having said all that, I believe that Spurs do not really need to spend big. Instead, one or two signings could be enough to sustain their title challenge for the next season. They have many youngsters - Harry Winks, Josh Onomah and Marcus Edward, to name a few - and should find a way to integrate them into the first team.
Spurs are on the right track. They have shown the world they mean business and hopefully they get their due next season.