Pochettino's "expensive" blunder has cost Spurs £103m and counting

Pochettino’s “expensive” blunder has cost Spurs £103m and counting

Ange Postecoglou was backed last summer in the transfer window as Tottenham Hotspur completed a number of signings to bolster their squad.

At this moment in time, they appear to have hit the mark with a host of those additions, including the likes of James Maddison, Micky van de Ven, and Guglielmo Vicario, who have all been influential figures for the Australian head coach.

However, Spurs have not always got it right when they have dipped into the market to splash the cash on new signings. Davinson Sanchez, whose value plummeted by £29m during his time at the club, is one example of their failures over the years.

Another piece of business Tottenham had a howler with was the signing of central midfielder Tanguy Ndombele, who is still contracted to the club, from Lyon in the summer of 2019.

How much Spurs paid for Ndombele

Spurs reportedly paid a staggering club-record fee of £63m to sign the French whiz from the Ligue 1 side in an attempt to improve Mauricio Pochettino’s team.

However, he failed to initially establish himself as a regular starter for the Argentine head coach with 12 starts in 21 appearances in the Premier League during the 2019/20 campaign.

That changed the following season, though, as Ndombele started 28 of his 33 league outings for Tottenham and chipped in with three goals and two assists from a midfield position.

Supporters can be forgiven for thinking that his emergence that year would be a platform for him to kick on and progress as a Spurs player but that is not what happened.

The French flop, who ex-Tottenham defender Alan Hutton described as “expensive”, only started six league games during the first half of the 2021/22 campaign before being sent back on loan to Lyon for the last six months of the season.

How much has Ndombele cost Spurs in total

The initial fee of £63m was already a huge amount of money for Spurs to pay but they have also had to pay his astonishing wages, which contributes to how much the signing has drained from the club.

He is reportedly on £200k-per-week, which works out at around £10.4m-per-season, and, therefore, cost the Lilywhites £20.8m in wages across his first two seasons in England, along with £5.2m for the first half of the 2021/22 campaign.

Lyon then brought him back on loan and paid a fee of £1.2m for that temporary deal, although it is unclear exactly how much they contributed to his wages as it was reported that the player had to pay the difference between what the two clubs were willing to do.

The France international was then sent out on loan to Serie A side Napoli for the 2022/23 season, and only €3.5m (£3m) of his £10.4m salary were covered by the Italian team.

This meant that Spurs still had to splash £7.4m in wages for the central midfielder that term, which took the overall total to £95.2m including his wages and transfer fee, with £1.2m taken away for the fee Lyon paid to sign him on loan, by the end of last season.

Ndombele was sent out on loan once again last summer as Turkish giants Galatasaray swooped for him and agreed to pay €3.1m (£2.6m) of his wages.

23/24 Super Lig

Tanguy Ndombele

Appearances

16

Starts

Four

Goals

Zero

Assists

One

Sofascore rating

6.75

Stats via Sofascore

This means that Tottenham will only pay £7.8m of his salary by the end of the 2023/24 season, and he is still contracted through to the end of next term.

Therefore, Ndombele will have cost the club at least £103m, given it remains unclear how much his loan spell with Lyon came to, by the summer with the transfer fee and wages combined.

There is no guarantee that they will be able to offload him permanently to get rid of the £10.4m due in the final year of his contract, so that figure could continue to rise.

Pochettino and Daniel Levy made a huge blunder with the signing of the French midfielder back in 2019 as it was a costly mistake, as evidenced by the financial outlay for just one season of regular starts in almost five years.