Ange Postecoglou makes an admission about the tweak that Spurs need in their transfer policy if they want to take the next step and challenge the top sides in the Premier League.
Many Tottenham fans feel that the club should have gone for more experienced and proven talent back in the summer rather than spend a big chunk of their transfer kitty on teenagers such as Lucas Bergvall, Archie Gray and Wilson Odobert.
Their frustrations are understandable when you consider the fact that the only experienced player that they spent big money on, Dominic Solanke, has made a big impact since arriving at N17.
Will we see Spurs take lessons from that and make similar big-money moves in January? Postecoglou explains why it is not a simple decision.
The Tottenham boss pointed out that, unlike some other sides in the Premier League, the Lilywhites do not have a bottomless pit of cash and would thus have to be smart with the decisions they make.
When asked if spending £65m back in the summer was proof that the club want to win right now, the Australian told Football.London: “The reality is it’s a balance of both. We’re rebuilding a team. Are we going to be a club to spend a billion pounds to buy ready-made players? No, we’re not. There are very few of those. There are ones that can do, but we’re not one of them. So that’s the reality. So then you’ve got to say ‘ok, where’s your spend going to go?’
“I was really keen to get Dom in because I knew he’d make us better from day one, absolutely. And he has, he’s been outstanding. When you are paying for ready-made players, there’s a premium. How we allocated the rest of that money was a decision we had to make.”
However, the Tottenham boss pointed out that the club also cannot miss out on opportunities to sign impressive young talent such as Archie Gray.
He continued: “Do we go for somebody else who is ready-made? We could have done but I think it would have been one of those stories where I’ll be 70 years old and I’d be saying ‘you know what, I could have signed Archie Gray’..and Archie Gray ends up being the player we know he’s going to be. So you go ‘you know what, we probably do need another experienced player, but I don’t think we can pass up Archie’.
“I think this is a unique opportunity, a unique space for us to get a really talented 18-year-old. You have to make that decision, I thought it was the best decision for the club and I think it will be the best decision for the club in the longer term. When you have finite resources, that doesn’t affect other decision you make. So I think it’s a balance of both.”
However, the 59-year-old confessed that moving forward, the Lilywhites are set to tweak their transfer strategy and focus on slightly more experienced players.
The Spurs head coach remarked that the young players in the Tottenham set-up need some experience around them to help them reach the next level.
He added: “Moving forward, we probably need to err on the side of getting a little bit more experience, just to help the group, because we’ve got very few at that kind of sweet spot in terms of ages. And we want to give the guys in their teens or early twenties the opportunity to keep growing.
“We need to make sure we put quality around them, so how we allocate the next resources may shift a little bit. But I’d hate to be sitting here now and saying we had an opportunity to sign Archie Gray at 18 and we passed it up because maybe we could have got a player who helps us for a couple of years.
“Yes, there’s discussions. When a club like ours is allocating such a big resource, there’s always discussions because you can’t get that one wrong. Because you invest heavily on a player who you need to make an impact straight away, if you get that one wrong, that has massive ramifications, not just for one window but for subsequent windows because I think if you get a wrong one long there’s a bit of latitude there in terms of moving forwards.
“Johan was really big on Dom, I was really big on him, we had guys like Matty Wells who had worked with him, just character-wise he ticked every box. It was a big decision for us, but I was really confident it was the right one.”
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