There may have been a few in the home end looking towards the sky during Xavi Simons’ on-pitch unveiling, waiting for a former hard-nosed Italian banker to swoop down from a helicopter, snatch the Dutchman and fly him down Seven Sisters Road.
Insecurity had been rife among Tottenham Hotspur’s fan base following not only a summer of rejections and hijackings, but years of transfer heartbreak. Before Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, there was João Moutinho and the paperwork error, Paulo Dybala’s image rights, as well as the ever-elusive Leandro Damião.
Spurs, off the back of their glorious night in Bilbao, had doubtlessly shown ambition in the market ahead of Thomas Frank’s first season at the helm. After completing their first piece of business with West Ham United in almost 15 years for the services of Mohammed Kudus, the club sought to swiftly wrap up a deal for Forest skipper Gibbs-White.
There was a sense that the off-field behemoth was finally starting to operate like a big boy on the football side of things, but it didn’t take long for that hope to seep away. Evangelos Marinakis head-locked his skipper into remaining at the City Ground, while the alternative, Eze, looked for all money to be donning Lilywhite until the enemy, led by new sporting director Andrea Berta, silently worked to scupper Spurs’ deal.
