Tottenham signed Matt Doherty from Wolverhampton Wanderers for £15m, but he’s not had the most convincing start to life in North London. Wolves replaced the 28-year-old with the £37m acquisition of Barcelona’s Nelson Semedo and big things are expected of the Portuguese international.
So how have Wolves managed to do better business than us?
We set our sights low in the transfer market
Sergio Reguilon and Gareth Bale aside, our transfer activity has been disappointing this summer. We needed to strengthen in midfield and agreed a deal with Southampton to sign Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, but he’s a player who didn’t set the place alight last season and isn’t a vast improvement on what we already have.
After releasing Michel Vorm, we needed another goalkeeper to accompany Hugo Lloris and Paulo Gazzaniga. Joe Hart was apparently the best backup available to us, despite 64 goals conceded in 37 games for Torino (August 31, 2016 – June 30, 2017), 42 goals conceded in 23 games for West Ham United (July 18, 2017 – May 31, 2018) and 48 goals conceded in 24 games for Burnley (August 7, 2018 – August 18, 2020).
And after selling Kyle Walker-Peters to Southampton, in addition to Serge Aurier being transfer-listed, we desperately needed another right-back. Doherty was who we stumbled upon – a player who impressed at Wolves but didn’t compare to the best in Europe.
If we’re on the hunt for a Champions League place this season, shouldn’t we be targeting more players of that ilk? Reguilon and Bale are good enough, but Hart, Doherty and Hojbjerg aren’t. And now teams that finished below us are doing better in the transfer market.
Teams have beaten us to coveted targets
We’ve missed out on James Rodriguez (to Everton), Donny van de Beek (to Manchester United), Ivan Rakitic (to Sevilla), Callum Wilson (to Newcastle United) and Ollie Watkins (to Aston Villa).
Chelsea have signed Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen), Timo Werner (RB Leipzig), Ben Chilwell (Leicester City), Hakim Ziyech (Ajax), Edouard Mendy (Stade Rennais), Malaga Sarr (OGC Nice) and Thiago Silva (Paris Saint-Germain) this summer. Everton have signed Allan (Napoli), Abdoulaye Doucoure (Watford) and James Rodriguez (Real Madrid).
We pulled off good business to strengthen at left-back and right-wing, but we still don’t have a replacement for Jan Vertonghen or competition for Harry Kane. Our midfield is still a weak point too.
In other news, are Tottenham really paying Inter Milan more than €50m to sign Milan Skriniar?
The answer to that question is because under Dan Levy Tottenham have continually focussed on a budget ahead of quality strategy, and is exactly the reason why Spurs miss out on so many decent players. It was somewhat refreshing to see our club signing Regulion and resigning Bale from Real though the latter is not an outright signing, and Regulion may well have come significantly cheaper than his truth worth.