Retrospection is a weird thing. While it will make you feel proud about some things you did, it will also leave you questioning and regretting some of the choices you made. And it holds in the world of football as well, especially when it comes to the transfer market.
Clubs invest huge amounts of money into players hoping they will strengthen the squad and add some value to the team. But not all players enjoy the same success after moving to a new club. Injury problems, difficulty to adjust to a new environment, the change in culture make it difficult for the players to achieve the heights they are capable of. And in some other cases, it turns out that the player was never up to the level required to succeed.
Tottenham too have had a fair share of great signings and some utterly poor ones. Here, we take a look at three players who Spurs were better off not signing in recent times, but were brought in at White Hart Lane:
Roberto Soldado
The 2013 summer transfer window saw Tottenham break their record fee spent over a player three times and Roberto Soldado became the most expensive player to have signed by the North London side.
Bought from Valencia for £26 million, Soldado was a massive disappointment at Tottenham. He struggled to adapt to life at London and adjust to the style of play at the club. He netted just six times in the Premier League his debut season, only two of which came from open play.
His subsequent season was even worse, where he just scored one goal in 24 league appearances. His confidence drained, he was looking a pale shadow of his former self who had scored 101 goals in 200-odd League games in Spain. He finally decided to return to Spain and has managed to revive his career at Villarreal.
Paulinho
Paulinho was another Spurs signing that was met with plenty of excitement by the fans. Dubbed as the ‘Brazilian Lampard’, a lot of things were expected from the former Corinthians star.
Signed from Corinthians in 2013 for £17 million, he was seen as a midfielder who could slot into the box-to-box role at the Lane, someone who would help out his defence while contributing with goals upfront.
But it was not to be. Despite starting fairly well under Andre Villas-Boas, things started to go downhill very soon for the Brazilian international. And soon enough, academy products Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb were ahead of him in the pecking order.
After a plenty of lacklustre performances in a spell that lasted two years, the midfielder was sold in June 2015 to the Chinese Super League side, Guangzhou Evergrande for £14 million.
Darren Bent
Signed from Charlton Athletic in 2007 for a then-record fee of £16.5 million, Darren Bent struggled a lot to get it right at Tottenham. A decent striker throughout his career, Bent had a hard time at the Lane as he failed to influence games. He made a reputation for missing the easiest of chances during his time with Tottenham.
One of the lowest points in his tenure at Spurs came when he missed an open goal in the dying minutes of the game against Portsmouth in January 2009. The match ended in a draw and then Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp, wasn’t pleased with his striker’s efforts, as he went on to claim, “You`ll never get a better chance to win a match than that. My missus could have scored that one,” after the game.
Bent was loaded off to Sunderland in 2009, for a fee of £10 million, plus add-ons, which would see the fee eventually rise to the £16.5 million that Spurs invested in the striker.