Chris Clark gives his thoughts on events taking place this summer regarding Spurs

Transfers, transfers, transfers. Transfers everywhere but none at N17. But how do you improve the best starting XI in the Premier League without significant investment?

It’s a tough proposition and one Mauricio Pochettino has talked in depth about only this week. Realistically how would you improve on a spine of Lloris/Vertongen/Alderweireld/Wanyama/Dembele/Kane, not to mention Eriksen and Alli?

Over the course of the last five seasons Spurs have been astute in the transfer window, and after the horror show of 2013/2014 have found the perfect manager for the chairman’s ideology of how a top-flight football should be run.

But you know what’s nagging at the back of my mind? What happens if one or two of the above mentioned players picks up a serious injury in September/October.

The replacements aren’t good enough for a team which should be challenging for the title. Ask yourself this question would Kevin Wimmer, Harry Winks, Vincent Janssen play for a title rival?

Whilst that may be harsh on Winks, he is theoretically next in line to start if one of Wanyama or Dembele is unavailable.

As for the other two, I’d find it hard to believe that either of those players would actually be in a Champions League team’s squad.

So how can Spurs build quality squad depth without the willingness to pay inflated transfer fees or large wages?

Like Pochettino has suggested this week, it’s tough. Will it be a case of waiting until transfer deadline day and some ‘Levy magic’ to take place?

Please bear in mind this happened only once, with the signing of Rafael van der Vaart and even then you sense that Real Madrid asking for first refusal on Luka Modric was part of the deal.

There have been plenty of horror shows from Spurs on previous deadline days to far outweigh that one deal. The summer we sold Dimitar Berbatov on the last day of the window to Man Utd and ended up with Fraizer Campbell on loan.

Also last summer when we inexplicably decided to gazump Everton in the signing of Moussa Sissoko for £30m.

What was even more baffling about that signing was that Sissoko could have been bought for less earlier in the window.

Levy has this need to do a deal on transfer deadline day, to quite possibly protect this image he has cultivated for himself in the media.

But by buying player’s earlier in the transfer window gives the coaching staff time to integrate the player into the team philosophy and style of play, it also benefits the player as well.

Admittedly Sissoko didn’t cover himself in glory last season, but he had just joined a team who were then consistently playing three matches a week.

For Spurs recent pre-season tour of the US, it would have been great to have a couple of new additions to the squad, but alas that wasn’t to be.

Now I don’t read much into pre-season results, ever since Juande Ramos guided us to an unbeaten pre-season whilst conceding no goals in 2008/2009.

We don’t need Mr H. Redknapp of Sandbanks to remind us how many points we had after eight games of that particular league season.

However I don’t think you can totally disregard the performance and result against Manchester City in our final game in the US.

That might well have been a jolt to the system that the players and coaching staff both needed. It was a timely reminder that our rivals for the league title and Champions League places have invested heavily in quality players this summer.

So onto Wembley and our final pre-season fixture against Juventus this Saturday. Personally, I would have chosen slightly weaker opposition, and sod the prestige of it all.

Whilst the players and manager might not think there is any ‘hoodoo’ about Spurs playing at Wembley you can be sure that it’s forefront in the media’s mind and opposition fans, and probably nestling away at the back of yours. Go on admit it to yourself.

Who knows by Sunday we would have a tidy win over Juventus in the bag, and a couple of new shiny players in the squad. You never know with Tottenham Hotspur.

Till next time. COYS!