Fabio Paratici has remarked that it is extremely challenging to do business in January as not a lot of players are on the market and thus insisted that Tottenham should be pleased that they managed to bring Arnaut Danjuma and Pedro Porro through the door.
It was widely reported ahead of the transfer window that a right wing-back and another attacking player were Antonio Conte’s priorities (90 min) and the Spurs hierarchy delivered on both counts.
Porro’s arrival has particularly excited some Tottenham fans, with the Spaniard creating more than three times as many chances from the right wing-back position this season than both Emerson Royal and Matt Doherty combined (talkSPORT).
Some supporters may have also wanted to see reinforcements in other areas of the pitch like centre-back but Paratici pointed out that Tottenham did not have many options to choose from during the window.
Spurs’ managing director of football told the club’s official website: “The January transfer window every time is not easy because, first thing, you can’t choose in all the market because a lot of players are not available because they are playing because the other club are not happy to sell the player.
“Sometimes you can get your targets so we are happy that we joined our targets and we added two international players to our squad.
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“I think we have to look at not the small picture about this transfer window but the big picture of our project.
“It’s a long-term project so when I came here 18 months ago, we used the word ‘rebuild’ the squad to be competitive in the most high level in the Premier League and we continue like this so every transfer window we sought to add two or three players, two or three pieces to our squad, to our plan.
“We want to sign just players that can add something to us, not to just sign players because we have to sign players or because we are under pressure about signing players. It’s not our style – we know our plans, we know our philosophy and we continue like this.”
The 50-year-old added that some of Tottenham’s transfer pursuits were made even harder by the fact that other clubs changed their transfer plans at different points in the window.
He added: “I think the most difficult thing in January is not the deadline but it’s during the transfer window because you get one thing that you don’t get in the summer – you get the matches inside of the window.
“Every three days you have matches and every three days, almost everything changes, so you have to be really flexible because players that are playing, they don’t play one match, they get frustrated.
“The clubs maybe change their idea because they want to change system or they want to change something, they are not happy about some players, so everything is really, really quick and you have to be a bit flexible because otherwise if you stay in the same position and everyone changes, you get it wrong.”
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What one has to remember is that any signing that a club makes has an opportunity cost as it prevents them from pursuing other players. If, for example, Tottenham’s top centre-back targets were not available in January, signing someone who is further down Conte’s pecking order, will mean that we cannot pursue our top targets in the summer.
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