The 3 tiers of inevitable Tottenham player sales

Whether Tottenham Hotspur get relegated to the Championship or just barely survive the drop, they’re certain to find more successful clubs circling around their best players like vultures. They’re also going to attempt to offload some of their poor performing high wage earners, likely to limited success.

Here are 7 big names that have a very good chance of getting shipped out this summer, sorted into tiers based on how painful that departure is likely to be.

Yeah, you’re going to have to sell: Porro, Van de Ven

These are the good players that Spurs won’t be happy about letting go of, but should still have strong enough markets to make it worth their while. This is a team in need of a comprehensive rebuild, and the 9 figures of fees likely to be collected for Pedro Porro and Micky van de Ven will go a long way towards helping Spurs pull one off.

Porro was probably a more effective attacking wingback under Ange Postecoglou, and has still shown enough this year as a ball progressor and playmaker to interest bigger clubs. He’d probably look excellent on a team that has a lot more of the ball.

The radar for van de Ven is admittedly quite ugly. His on ball contributions are not looking so hot.

But we live in a wildly physicalspilled world, and van de Ven might be the fastest center back playing high level football anywhere in the world at the moment. His ability to maintain that Olympic 100m dash speed while carrying the ball will have sporting directors drooling, even if he often looks quite average as an actual defender.

More so than any of Spurs’ other players, these two have the skillset to contribute to a much better team, and I don’t think this season has hurt their markets much at all.

Probably getting screwed on these: Simons, Romero

Two years ago, Xavi Simons was one of the most exciting young attackers in the world. But he demanded to leave RB Leipzig after they had a poor campaign and missed out on Champions League, and was apparently willing to go just about anywhere that could offer him CL football and improve on his previous wages. This appears to have been a poor career decision.

A guy who forced his way out of Leipzig for finishing 7th in the Bundesliga will probably not feel bad about doing the same to a Tottenham side that finishes 17th or gets relegated, even if his lack of output was a significant factor in their poor results. But Spurs aren’t likely to find a market for him at the £42m they’d need to break even for accounting purposes, so it’s likely that the two parties will have a staring contest deep into August before agreeing to some variety of loan-to-buy on deadline day.

Tottenham’s decision to extend Cristian Romero instead of negotiating to sell him to a previously interested Atlético Madrid side also doesn’t look great. He’s now a year older, and has the stain of captaining this side on his CV. They’re not getting another offer in the range of the £50m that Atléti were rumoured to pay last summer.

The good news is that Romero’s stats have benefitted from a more defensive style of play and a focus on set pieces.

This might trick a potential buyer into believing he wasn’t a significantly worse player this season than he was in previous campaigns. But I suggest they double check the tape.

Praying there’s a market: Vicario, Kudus, Solanke

Guglielmo Vicario has posted some insane highlights in a Tottenham shirt, particularly in the Europa League final against Manchester United. For that reason, he’ll probably always be remembered fondly by Tottenham supporters. But he’s also a smidge below mid as a shot stopper, consistently.

On pure vibes, Vicario seems to have maintained his reputation as A Good Goalkeeper, and it’s possible that Spurs can still sell him for a big fee. But I’m not so sure that he has a market at the price they think they should be getting.

I do not personally think that Mohammed Kudus is a good player who can help keep Tottenham up if he returns from injury after the international break. But I do think he could do enough flicks and stepovers to trick another team into thinking that he’s an elite creative talent, and Tottenham are the problem.

Given that he’s been much worse for Spurs than he was on a very bad West Ham team, you’d really hope no one was fooled.

Like Simons, the fee from last summer is a huge barrier to a sale. Spurs need to get £44m for Kudus to show as break even on the books. This will be much harder to pull off than it was for Simons, mostly because Xavi Simons has previously been a productive footballer. I don’t even know who loans Kudus to buy later at the following season’s break even price of £33m. This might be one of Tottenham’s all-time great disaster transfers.

But Kudus and Simons both cost less than Dominic Solanke, who’s missed much of the season with injury. He hasn’t been productive upon returning, though it’s hard to say how much of that is his fault. His lack of production mirrors the rest of the team, though theoretically a £65m striker should be able to get off more than 0.17 xG per 90, even on the worst team in the league.

Solanke has previously lit up the Championship, and I think that might be exactly what he’s doing again next season.

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