Let’s talk some more about the transfer market!
Tottenham Hotspur had an eventful, if not crazy, summer transfer window that is yet to translate to success on the football pitch, and this series aims to make sense of it all. Though it’s well known that a club’s wage bill is arguably the most reliable predictor of success in the Premier League, it’s nonetheless interesting to dive into the data^ surrounding Spurs’ transfer activity to understand the approach, strategy, and whether there are any indicators
for future success in there.
In short, are Spurs BAD at transfers? And should we be hopeful following Spurs’ eventful 2026/27 summer transfer window?
We left off Part 1 with an overview of Spurs’ 26/27 summer transfer strategy: invest heavily in experienced, Premier League-ready players while significantly turning over the squad. Will that be a successful strategy, and how does said approach compare to that of some of the Premier League’s most successful clubs?
^ Data for this piece cover senior player incomings and outgoings in summer windows only; whether a player is considered a senior player or not is determined by Transfermarkt; promotions from youth teams are not included. Additionally, loan to buy deals are treated as just that: loans, and I have tracked free outgoing transfers and player releases separately… but more on that later. Basically, the idea was to compare apples with apples wherever possible.
Reviewing Spurs’ transfer strategy
As covered in the previous piece, there were a few notable takeaways from the data with regards to Spurs’ summer: ALL of Spurs’ ten signings were from English clubs; Spurs’ average incoming age of 27.4 was the highest of the four clubs in our dataset; and Spurs splashed the cash on two record signings.
What do the data, however, say about the impact of that approach on Premier League performance? Let’s take a look at how this approach has impacted clubs’ points in the ensuing seasons:
Transfer success analysis: % of signings from English clubs, age refresh gap, and largest two signings % share of spend vs points change from previous season
Firstly, there’s the focus on “Premier League-proven” players, or at least those coming from within the English pyramid, and there’s not really much correlation with a year-on-year improvement here. You could maybe make an argument that too many signings from within the UK or too few is a net negative, but probably the biggest takeaway is that the cliche has little truth to it: it doesn’t really matter whether players come from within the Premier League or not; a transfer strategy focused on homegrown players not guaranteed to improve your overall performance. With that in mind, Spurs’ insistence on signing only players that meet this criterion seems less like a strategic focus and more like a failure in scouting.
Next, there’s the age factor. Does it make sense to target older players? In short, no. For this one, the metric of interest is “Age Refresh Gap”: the difference in average age of incoming vs outgoing players, where the number represents how many years younger a squad is getting (i.e. a positive number means overall the squad has got younger). This is one metric where there does seem to be a reasonably clear relationship: apart from Spurs’ massive drop-off in 24/25, there is a decent correlation between making your squad younger and improvement in Premier League performance.
This metric for the summer just been sits at -3.9, with Spurs having an average incoming age of 27.4 and an average outgoing and released age of 23.5. That -3.9 is roughly around where some of those -10-to–20-point drop-offs sit, which doesn’t fill one with confidence as to Spurs’ transfer strategy. There’s a point to be made that last season’s average squad age of 24 is towards the lower end of the squad age numbers in our dataset and therefore that Spurs needed to add experience, but that point is made with additional caveats: firstly, Arsenal won the title last season with a squad that had an average age of 23.9; and secondly, Spurs’ average age now is 26.6, the highest of any of the sides / seasons in our dataset. Did Spurs need to bring in more experience? Maybe, but they now have a rather old squad in the scheme of things, which doesn’t tend to lend itself to success (coincidentally, this season’s Arsenal squad is somewhat close as well, with an average age of 26.5).
The final metric in the list of charts is the big money buys, or how each club focuses (or spreads around) its transfer activity. For this one, there’s again not a strong correlation with performance improvement or drop-off, though you could loosely make the claim that if you don’t have a high overall transfer spend (the size of our plot points) AND most of that spend is only on a couple of players, that tends to not go so well. Conversely, a decent-sized transfer budget spread across multiple targets seems to garner reasonable success (outside of Liverpool’s hilarious drop-off last season). Spurs’ Largest Two Signings Share of Spend at 56.5% this summer combined with significant overall spend thus signals both intent from the club to improve and hopefully an improvement in points secured this season.
The conclusion to take from this is that a number of the cliches spouted from many a pundit and a fan really hold very little truth. Premier League-proven is something of a myth; you can actually win things with kids; and focusing purely on big money signings isn’t a guarantee of success. With that in mind, Spurs’ strategy through the 26/27 summer transfer window is unlikely to result in a substantial improvement, apart from the fact that they, ya know, spent a bunch of money. It’s just hard to argue they spent it well.
Which brings me to my next point.
Are Spurs… cheap?
This is one of the most telling visualizations yet. It’s a simple data plot, with four data points, one for each club. How many players did each club bring in, and what was the average transfer fee? You can view both the 26/27 window and the entirety of the past 5 years using the dropdown:
Total incoming transfers vs average incoming transfer fee, last five summers and 2026/27 summer
That is a fascinating look into Spurs’ approach. Despite Spurs’ significant investment over both the past five years AND this summer, the Lilywhites trail the other three clubs by some distance when it comes to actually spending money on individual players. The Spurs front office just does not seem to want to invest big money in particular players… or when they do, bring in a bunch of very cheap (or loans, or free) players to offset that cost.
What’s particularly saddening is despite the big song and dance around Spurs’ investment this summer, this hasn’t changed. Yes, Spurs’ €36.64 million average player spend is a solid improvement on the five-year average of €29.55, and close to Arsenal’s five-year average of €36.88 million; but all the other clubs have also raised their game, with Liverpool the closest to Spurs over the summer with a whopping average fee of €44.1 million.
Those numbers do not make for fun reading.
Do Spurs at least get a good return on investment?
Okay, so this all starts to paint a not-so-pretty picture. A mixed-at-best strategy combined with a reluctance to spend to bring in quality. Quantity over quality does not tend to work in the Premier League… unless you can operate like a Brighton & Hove Albion and turn that quantity into decent profit to then reinvest in your squad, eventually reaching level where you can compete. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.
To assess this, we can take a look at some normalized data across the last five years. For every €100 Spurs spend, what’s the return?
Normalized transfer spend, past five summer windows
The answer is, “Not great, Bob!”
For every €100 Spurs spend, they’re only getting back €36.35. That’s really poor, especially considering Manchester City’s whopping €74 recovery per €100 spend. That said, Spurs are better than North London rivals Arsenal who seem to make a number of poor investments, only recovering €32.42.
This comes dangerously close to arguing for profit over glory, and that’s definitely not the take-away from these data; instead, this is an attempt to highlight the importance of smart investment, especially given Spurs’ quantity over quality approach. If Spurs are targeting a cheaper brand of player, those targets need to have a level of quality that transcends the price tag: diamonds in the rough, so to speak. Those players either need to turn into stars, or develop in a manner that allows Spurs to move them on for a profit and bring in a player at a higher level, gradually improving and growing the squad.
And that all starts with strong talent identification: scouting and data, where Spurs have clearly fallen behind.
In Part 3, which will be out early next week, we’ll take a bit more of a detailed look into Spurs’ selling activity and how this summer really compares to a successful window, as we attempt to answer: are Spurs BAD at transfers?
