After the Window: Spurs

Spurs late summer looked a lot like the one experienced across North London at Arsenal. What the acquisitions lacked in romance and long term strategic benefit they more than made up for in being effective near-term band-aids. Spurs needed something new at forward and a deep-lying player to both win the ball and start the attack. It certainly would have been nice to find a reliable partner for Michael Dawson but presumably the combination of Ledley King and William Gallas will be able to get the job done for 80% of the matches over the course of the upcoming season.

The Existing Squad – The biggest question is how Luka Modric will be affected by his dalliance with Chelsea. Players have all sorts of reactions to not getting their way in the transfer market and I don’t think we know enough about Modric to guess as to his reaction and what impact it might have on his value or that of the teammates he orchestrates. Elsewhere, the presence of K2 will presumably be a boon to Gareth Bale who will finally have someone both tall enough and powerful enough get to crosses in the box. With Spurs past the Manchester SuperPowers for the first half of the season, you have to like the value available in Brad Friedel. He’s getting pretty long in the tooth but you’d be hard pressed to blame any of Spurs issues thus far on him.  Kyle Walker is worth watching as well with Alan Hutton having made his way to the right back spot that Walker held down last season at Villa.

K2 – He may be pretty much universally despised but assuming he hasn’t regressed significantly he’ll be a massive upgrade over Crouch/Pavyluchenko as VDV’s partner up front. With Parker offering more going forward than the combination of Sandro and Palacios that he is replacing and K2 offering more than the Crouch/Pav combo Aaron Lennon is really the only weak link in the Spurs attacking group. If Lennon could consistently produce the end product he has shown sporadically, this group would be dynamite. Regardless, K2 will make things better and be a strong value once Spurs match-ups become favorable. This weekend on the road at Wolves is a tough call but it will certainly get easier soon enough.

Parker – The question that has never really been answered is whether Scott Parker is anything more than a really effective big fish in a little pond. His only real chance to show what he could produce at the highest level was at Chelsea and one could argue that he, like most of his English compatriots who were acquired when the Blues came into their Russian wealth, never really had a chance to show what he could do. He was supplanted by continental players of superior talent almost as soon as he arrived and with Bridge, Duff, SWP, and others was left by the wayside until he was rescued by WHU. With better teammates around him but little challenge for his spot in the line-up we’ll finally have a chance to see what he can do. This is essentially the same analysis that we made with Arteta going to Arsenal – will his more talented teammates take away fantasy value or will they create more opportunity? It could go either way and will be worth watching.


The Downsides – There really aren't many/any downsides from Spurs transfer activities since they sold or loaned out all of the players who would have lost productivity to K2 and Parker. The big question comes next season when K2 presumably ends up somewhere else and Spurs have to buy a forward to fill the void.