Ange Postecoglou has been in charge of Tottenham Hotspur for just under a season and a half now, and it would be fair to say he’s more than made his mark.
The team no longer play the mind-numbingly boring football they did under previous bosses, instead they are now one of the most entertaining sides in the country.
Moreover, the Australian has also been able to bring in a number of his own players to alter the squad while also seeing some of those he doesn’t want go the other way.
However, he has not been able to completely transform the squad, as exemplified by a defensive flop signed by José Mourinho in 2020, a flop who has cost the club millions and earns more than the incredibly important Micky van de Ven.
Van de Ven's importance to Spurs
Now, there are several vitally important players in Postecoglou’s Spurs squad, from the mercurial brilliance of Dejan Kulusevski, the newfound goalscoring reliability of Brennan Johnson or the often impressive shot-stopping abilities of the now injured Guglielmo Vicario.
However, if you were to ask a group of fans just who they thought the Lilywhites’ most important player was, we’d hazard a guess that the majority answer would be Van de Ven.
The Dutchman joined the North Londoners from VfL Wolfsburg for £43m last summer, and while he wasn’t necessarily a household name among Premier League fans at the time, he certainly is now and that’s down to two reasons.
The first is something all the best centre-backs possess but is practically impossible to quantify: match intelligence.
Unlike his defensive partner Cristian Romero, who has built a reputation as being somewhat of a hothead, the former Wolfsburg ace usually looks calm and composed.
When you watch him throughout a game, more often than not, he makes the right decisions and finds himself in the right positions, although that is helped by the second reason he’s so highly thought of: his incredible speed.
Yes, the new Flying Dutchman has the rare trait of being a blisteringly fast defender, which allows him to maintain a highline with his teammates and then cover back when needed to cut off counter-attacks, and this is something the team have sorely missed when he’s been injured.
In all, the Wormer-born titan is an essential member of Postecoglou’s side, and on top of excelling as a centre-back, he can also fill in at left-back, which is interesting, as that’s the natural position of arguably the least important player in the squad.
The Mourinho flop who's cost Spurs millions
So, to get straight to the point, the player in question is Spanish left-back Sergio Reguilon, who was signed by Mourinho in 2020 for an enormous fee of £32m, which now looks like a ludicrous amount of money to spend on a player who couldn’t buy a start.
Life in North London started well enough for the former Real Madrid prospect, and in his first two campaigns for the club, he provided six assists and scored two goals, but partway through the second, the club appointed Antonio Conte, who ruthlessly cut him from the team ahead of the 22/23 campaign, sending him on loan to Atlético Madrid instead.
Upon his return from the Spanish capital, it was clear that Postecoglou also didn’t fancy the 27-year-old and sent him to Manchester United for six months and, after that, to Brentford for the second half of the season.
Amazingly, despite having all this experience, the Madrid-born defender has only made it onto the bench twice this season, against Coventry City in September and then against Fulham on the weekend, so it would be entirely fair to say his career in North London is over.
What makes all of this worse is that Spurs have been paying the once promising full-back £53k-per-week while he’s been in N17, so when you add up the weeks he’s not been on loan, plus his initial £32m fee, he’s cost the Lilywhites an eye-watering £38.6m, which is outrageous for a player who has made just 67 appearances in four years.
Fee
£32m
Wages so far
£6.6m
Appearances
67
Cost per Appearance
£576k
Goals
2
Cost per Goal
£19.3m
Assists
6
Cost per Assist
£6.4m
Goal Involvements
8
Cost per Goal Involvements
£4.8m
Broken down, that comes to £576k-per-appearance, £19.3m-per-goal, £6.4m-per-assist and £4.8m-per-goal-involvement, which can hardly be described as value for money, especially when Van de Ven is earning less at £50k-per-week.
Ultimately, while Reguilon isn’t a terrible player, it’s clear he has no future at Spurs, and so the club should be doing everything they can to move him on as soon as possible, and based on reports last month, that might actually be happening.
He's outscoring Solanke: Spurs target "monster" signing who's like Kane
The sensational striker would make Spurs even more dangerous.
1 ByJack Salveson HolmesDec 3, 2024