The road back to the top will have to come via Damascus for Tottenham Hotspur.
After failing to maximise the Harry Kane era, they are now trying to atone for the sins that led them to two successive 17th-placed finishes in the Premier League.
The simplest reason as to why Spurs are in such a mess relates to recruitment. In the final years of Daniel Levy’s tenure, the club found themselves dropping further back down the table than an England team in a semi-final coached by Thomas Tuchel (too soon?).
And so here we are today, with Tottenham a tad fortunate to even still be a Premier League side. The manager who saved them, Roberto De Zerbi, has arguably earned the right to lead an expensive rebuild, but there are plenty of reasons to be cautious and pessimistic about the plan of action.
At the time of writing, Spurs have signed six new players during the summer window, all of whom played in the Premier League last season – Jan Paul van Hecke, Martin Dubravka, Marcos Senesi, Andy Robertson, Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali. The last two names on that list saw Tottenham obliterate their transfer record with extreme overpays, with Fernandes costing a flat £85m and Tonali’s final price projected to reach £100m.
