Alex McLeish has suggested that Tottenham Hotspur may have done the right thing by making incremental changes to the squad in January rather than completely overhauling it.
Antonio Conte has made it clear over the past couple of months that he feels there is a gulf in quality between his squad and the best teams in the Premier League (Sky Sports).
However, Spurs were only able to make two new additions during the January window in the form of Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur.
The club’s attempts to complete deals for Adama Traore and Luiz Diaz proved unsuccessful (The Athletic), with the two wide men joining Barcelona and Liverpool respectively.
Football.London’s Alasdair Gold has said that Conte is relatively content with the business Spurs have done, even though he would have liked to have seen more players come in.
McLeish has now suggested that Tottenham’s objectives in the transfer market may have been about quality rather than quantity and suggested we could see a similar approach from the Lilywhites in the summer.
The former Birmingham City boss told Football Insider: “I’ve not seen any comments from Conte so far. But you could see two or three weeks before him saying we do have to improve it and build and get other players in.
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“Whether he’s thinking less is more? If Spurs fans are thinking: ‘We should have had four or five other players,’ then think back to that team when they sold Gareth Bale.
“I think sometimes less is more. Conte has made a decent start but, as we’ve always said, Daniel Levy hasn’t gone over the top in terms of signings over the years.
“One of the examples was Jose Mourinho coming in. I’ve never heard Mourinho saying something like he did when he said: ‘I’m going to delve into the academy because we’ve got a lot of good young players.’
“Reading between the lines, I’m saying he’s probably not getting any money to spend. True enough, that proved to be correct.
“Daniel Levy is a pretty shrewd guy and he might be waiting on signing that one spectacular player this summer. His manager could be in cahoots with him and on the same page. It’s great when the chairman and the manager are on the same page.”
Spurs Web Opinion
More than the two signings we made, what stood out to me in January were the players we decided to offload.
The fact that Spurs got rid of two of their most expensive signings in Lo Celso and Ndombele, along with Dele, suggests that the club are prepared to fully back Conte’s vision.
So, I would expect another mini-clear out in the summer and a significant amount of money to be spent.
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