Appearing on Sky Sports’ coverage of last Saturday’s penultimate Premier League clash of the season between Bournemouth and Tottenham Hotspur, former player and now pundit Jamie Redknapp struck a chord with Spurs fans as he called on the club to not only strengthen during the coming summer transfer window, but also importantly replace Mousa Dembele.
With the club not making a single signing across the 2018/19 campaign, tensions were certainly frayed at the weekend as we failed to take even a point from Dean Court, having been reduced to nine men following the straight red cards for Son Heung-Min and Juan Foyth.
With Dembele moving on to China during the January window, fans have already vented their anger that he wasn’t kept, or replaced, during the month – a clear oversight given the injuries we’ve suffered in midfield this year – and Redknapp was fully on board with those thoughts as he explained.
“I think they need to buy in the summer, get some strength in midfield because they’ve lost Dembele, who for me was one of the best, so they need to get someone in who can get them to that next level.”
With most transfer speculation linking us with more creative flair types, we should certainly be looking for another holding option to offer some protection to the backline and somebody that can mix in and do the more ugly stuff, but manager Mauricio Pochettino can’t have been clearer about the requirement for summer spending given his more recent words, so over to the club and scouting staff.