Manager: Mauricio Pochettino
Last season: 6th
Major signings: Michel Vorm (undisclosed, Swansea), Ben Davies (undisclosed, Swansea), Eric Dier (£4m, Sporting Lisbon).
Players out: Gylfi Sigurdsson (swap, Swansea), Jake Livermore (Hull City, £8m), Heurelho Gomes (free, Watford), Grant Hall (loan, Birmingham), Alex Pritchard (loan, Brentford), Giancarlo Gallifuoco, Cameron Lancaster, Roman Michael-Percil, Jonathan Miles, Kevin Stewart, Lawrence Vigouroux (released), Kenny McEvoy (loan, Peterborough), Yago Falque (£4m, Genoa), Shaquile Coulthirst (loan, Southend), Jordan Archer (loan, Northampton).
Expectations: Expectations are always high among Spurs fans and even more so over the last couple of seasons with big money being spent as well as a small flutter with the glamour of the Champions League. But Spurs fans need to take into account that they have a talented new manager who will need some time to impose his philosophy on his players.
Having spent over 100 million last summer, they can afford to be slightly optimistic that these players will have settled into the physicality of the Premier League and will begin to play some of their best football. Marquee signing Erik Lamela spent most of last season fighting injury or warming the bench and big things are expected of the former Roma midfielder next season.
I expect a slow start to the league and many critics to question whether the job is too big for Pochettino, but those people are not the kind of people you need in your life. Towards the middle of October we will see a shift in fortunes for the London club as they begin to feel comfortable with Pochettino’s style and they may gain a bit of momentum in the run up to the busy Christmas period.
One of the things that will haunt the Argentine while he eats his morning porridge will be the lack of form of his strikers. Roberto Soldado scored just six goals in 28 appearances last year while Emmanuel Adebayor is just not a consistent enough goal scorer to be the club’s leading centre-forward. In the run in last season they used young Harry Kane regularly up front, but it remains to be seen if he has the quality to shoulder the responsibility of being the club’s main goal scorer.
Spurs do have a very strong squad overall, especially in midfield. Eriksson and Dembélé are quality operators and will surely be integral to Pochettino’s plans for the coming season. If the squad can adapt quickly to their new manager then they could be dark horses for the last Champions League spot.
Irish angle: Not much of an Irish angle in Tottenham at the minute it must be said. If we were to look at them historically, Robbie Keane, Stephen Carr and Chris Hughton all plied their trade at the club throughout the years. After that we are struggling to put an Irish spin on them, although rumours are circulating that Mauricio Pochettino’s first name is actually Seamus, although we may have just made this up…
If they were a fictional character… they’d be Dr Who. Numerous face lifts and cast changes but at the end of the day, Dr Who is still the same, much like Spurs. They often threaten to burst out of their cocoon and startle everybody with a winning run, but they fall by the wayside more often than not.
Where will they end up? 6th place is a realistic expectation for Spurs fans.
