Two weeks from now Antonio Conte will expect to see fresh options as he steps on the training pitch. The Tottenham Hotspur head coach has been frank in his discussions with chairman Daniel Levy around the need to carry out surgery on a squad that has been allowed to weaken across several years as the club’s focus zoned in on improving off-field infrastructure.
But with potentially five teams fighting for the final Champions League spot, there is a feeling - equally applicable to three of the other four - that now might be the right moment to gamble in the remaining fortnight of an unsurprisingly hitherto quiet transfer window.
Spurs, beaten finalists three years ago, are more than aware that being among the continent’s top 32 is more important than ever. Last season Chelsea made more than €100million (£83.5million) in prize money compared to Spurs getting €11.9million (£9.9million) for reaching the Europa League round of 16 and €5.8million (£4.8million) for this season’s Covid-impacted Conference League.
Except there are two significant caveats. And the first is the chairman’s prudence.
As John Purcell, of the financial analysts vysyble says: “Has Daniel Levy to take a risk?”
For any significant arrival there will almost certainly need to be a couple of departures. Conte has barely attempted to disguise his unfavourable opinion of a number of players, most notably Tanguy Ndombele, but there has so far been a lack of serious suitors.
“Look at Levy’s track record in the transfer market and it’s clearly quite conservative,” Purcell adds. “But at the same time, the prize is that you can do exceptionally well financially from a Champions League run.
"It comes down to what Levy considers the business risk. I suspect he will buy as long as he can sell and we won’t know until the last day of the window.”
The ability to move the unwanted on has been complicated by the route to Europe being narrowed due to the financial constraints facing many of the continent’s biggest clubs.
Ndombele, for instance, has three and a half years remaining on his contract and there have been reports of two Serie A clubs stepping back from interest owing to a salary of about £120,000-a-week. That Spurs paid a club record £55million to sign him in the summer of 2019 means they will be loath to let him go without some compensation.
Figures released by FIFA last week showed that in 2021 $1.39billion was spent on international fees by English clubs with a massive gap to Italy on $667.7million and France on $511.8million. While England also led the way when it came to receipts, with $548.8m, Italy's net spend was far smaller thanks to an income of $540.4million and France turned a profit having earned $543.3million from sales.
Those numbers do not take domestic deals into account but it is clear that England again leads the way.
Yet the financial reality for the likes of Juventus has bitten even harder in the past six months and the expectation is the 2022 figures will fall sharply.
“It’s been exacerbated by the pandemic,” Tom Bason of Coventry University says. “We’ve seen in the past 18 months that English clubs have managed OK broadly but clubs abroad haven’t and that’s cut off a sale option.
“Italian teams are making huge losses partly brought on by the pandemic but partly because the English clubs have so much money that clubs abroad are borrowing money to keep up with them.
“That means they’re not spending money now, cutting off a sale option for English clubs. All are tightening their belts apart from the clubs who are backed by owners who can put the cash up easily.”
The other contributing factor to a quiet window has been the number of players running down their contracts. That is both an indication of increasing power among the true elite, who expect to have their choice of clubs in the summer, and pandemiconomics.
Could we see Kylian Mbappe take a Kevin Durant-style approach and welcome a number of pitches from the biggest clubs before deciding his next destination? Does that position of strength stretch to the less marketable players such as Toni Rudiger?
“We’ve seen this a lot in American sport,” Bason adds. “They get huge, huge sign on fees and it’s in the player’s best interests if you’re Paul Pogba or someone to not sign a contract and move on a free and effectively pocket the money that would have been spent on the transfer fee. There’s power to the players on this.
“If Kylian Mbappe decided to [replicate Durant], every club in the world would turn up in Paris. We’ve already heard of Erling Haaland’s father going from club to club. This makes sense for certain players but not for all, because we’ve also seen clubs are not extending because it’s risky for players to get new contracts at a certain age.
“Look at the contracts signed by [Mesut] Ozil and [Pierre Emerick] Aubameyang and you end up with players locked in on high wages who they then can’t get rid of. I suspect clubs in the current climate are now reluctant to do that because you don’t want to end up with a player who is 31 or 32, not in the first team but the highest-paid player in the squad.”
