Even for a club that has been in a permanent state of flux for at least four years, the rebuild facing Tottenham’s new manager and director of football this summer is particularly daunting.
A number of senior players, notably captain Hugo Lloris and Harry Kane, are entering the final year of their contracts and face uncertain summers, while several members of the squad, including Davinson Sanchez and Ryan Sessegnon, feel in desperate need of a fresh start.
Acting head coach Ryan Mason finished the season with a 25-man group, but Spurs had eight senior players out on loan, making a total of 33.
Lucas Moura has been released, while Arnaut Danjuma and Clement Lenglet are set to return to La Liga after their loans ended (Spurs could weigh up a permanent move for the Frenchman but have not taken up their option on Danjuma), but that still leaves 31.
With no European football next season, Spurs will play a maximum of 50 games, and that is if they reach the final of both domestic cups.
Any new manager will likely want to work with a lean group of about 18 or 19 senior players, leaving the club needing to cut up to 13 before they even start making room for new signings. Realistically, they may have to offload up to 17 or 18 players — an enormous job for a single summer and the result of a hodgepodge transfer strategy, executed under four different head coaches.
For example, Spurs will be in the market for a top centre-half in the summer after their worst season defensively in nearly 50 years, but they already have Sanchez, Eric Dier, Cristian Romero, Joe Rodon and Japhet Tanganga on the books, with Lenglet to potentially return.
A new manager who favours a back four may also want to upgrade on left-backs Ben Davies and Sergio Reguilon, but will also have wing-backs Sessegnon, Destiny Udogie and Ivan Perisic to manage.
Some senior players, such as Perisic and Lloris, could be allowed to find new clubs, while there are obvious contenders to go out on loan, including young midfielder Pape Matar Sarr and goalkeepers Alfie Whiteman and Brandon Austin.
The toughest decisions concern the returning loanees. Much depends on the identity of the successors to Antonio Conte and Fabio Paratici but, of the players out on loan this term, only young full-backs Udogie (who is set to arrive at Spurs from Udinese after being loaned back to the Serie A club for a year) and Djed Spence look good bets to be part of next season’s squad.
Tanguy Ndombele, Rodon and Harry Winks, who have all struggled to convince three successive managers, appear unlikely to have a future, while Giovani Lo Celso and Reguilon are talented but have struggled to fit in and are considered saleable assets.
With many of these players, Spurs have kicked the can down the road for too long and have now been left with a mess of depreciating assets on big wages.
Do Spurs accept a massive loss on £55million signings Ndombele or Lo Celso, for example, or reluctantly accept loan deals again in the hope they could still excel elsewhere?
One option is to follow the lead of north London rivals Arsenal, who were ruthless in offloading unwanted big-earners Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang during their own rebuild under Mikel Arteta.
Both Ozil and Aubameyang were allowed to leave Arsenal on free transfers, enabling Arteta to reallocate their enormous wages and accelerate the process of building a young squad in his own image.
Spurs have shown some willingness to take a similar approach in the past, releasing Serge Aurier from his contract on deadline day in summer 2021, and writing off the final six months of Matt Doherty’s deal so he could join Atletico Madrid in January.
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has previously been reluctant to write-off expensive assets, however, and the club has already played down reports that Ndombele could be released from his contract early.
Clearly, though, with such a massive rebuild ahead, the club may have to take some short-term financial pain for long-term gain.
