Tottenham Hotspur’s technical director Johan Lange has done an impressive job this summer of selling players on the fringes of Ange Postecoglou’s first-team squad.
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg moved to Marseille on loan with an obligation to buy. Oliver Skipp joined Leicester City permanently in a deal which could reach £25million ($32.9m). Emerson Royal is now at AC Milan. Tanguy Ndombele, Ryan Sessegnon and Japhet Tanganga were released. The money was reinvested and the quality of the squad has been raised. The £65m club-record signing of Dominic Solanke should solve a lot of problems up front. Teenagers Lucas Bergvall, Wilson Odobert and Archie Gray have been bought for the future but are ready to contribute straight away.
Postecoglou will be happy he has a much tighter squad to work with. He also has more individuals who suit his philosophy. The newly-expanded version of the Europa League should afford players who are not in the starting XI regular minutes compared to last season when there was no European football and Spurs were eliminated from both domestic cup competitions early.
Heading into the final week of August, Spurs still needed to shift two players: Giovani Lo Celso and Sergio Reguilon. Lo Celso directly contributed to four goals in 22 appearances last season but only started on four occasions and racked up 497 minutes. The midfielder has been a key figure in Argentina’s back-to-back Copa America triumphs but he has never come close to having the same impact at Tottenham.
He joined them in August 2019, initially on loan, from Real Betis. After his move was made permanent, he struggled to establish himself in the first team, then spent 18 months on loan with Villarreal before a brief comeback under Postecoglou. He then sealed a return to Betis last week.
This leaves Reguilon as the last man standing in Tottenham’s outcasts; not a part of Postecoglou’s plans but with a year left on his contract. The left-back’s most recent appearance for Spurs was in a 1-0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion in April 2022 when Antonio Conte was still in charge. Since then, he has spent time on loan with Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and Brentford.
Reguilon during his last appearance for Spurs (Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)
The 27-year-old returned to Hotspur Way at the start of pre-season but was left out of their tour to Japan and South Korea to “explore transfer opportunities”. Reguilon made two appearances for Manchester United in the Champions League last season and wants to return to that level but there was minimal interest in him this summer. There was tentative interest from Barcelona at the beginning of August which never progressed any further. Time is running out as there are only a small number of transfer windows still open including Belgium (September 6), Greece (September 11) and Turkey (September 13).
Last Friday, Postecoglou said that Lo Celso and Reguilon “don’t have to get integrated back into the squad” if they failed to secure moves away — this was before the former’s reunion with Betis was announced.
“It’s pretty clear where they sit in terms of where we are as a squad and where we are as a team,” Postecoglou said. “But I’ve never been one to force people out. They’ve got decisions (to make) about their own careers and what they want to do. And if they’re still here, they’re still here. We’ll work around that scenario. But it certainly won’t affect the way we work in the first team.”
The problem for Reguilon is that he does not fit Postecoglou’s ethos. The left-back likes to overlap and fire crosses into the box for strikers to attack. He picked up two assists in Brentford’s 3-3 draw with Aston Villa in April by doing exactly that.
Postecoglou wants his full-backs to move inside and join the build-up. There were times during last Sunday’s 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United when Destiny Udogie was more advanced in central areas than James Maddison when Spurs were playing out from the back. There are parallels between Reguilon and Ben Chilwell, who finds himself in a similar situation at Chelsea under their new head coach Enzo Maresca. Football at the elite level is moving away from overlapping full-backs, and Reguilon and Chilwell are two unfortunate victims.
It is a strange sequence of events because Reguilon’s performances were initially encouraging on his arrival from Real Madrid in September 2020 for £27.5million. He had spent the previous season on loan with Sevilla, helping them finish fourth in the Spanish top flight and win the Europa League.
As The Athletic reported in April, there is an internal perception at Tottenham that when things aren’t going well or Reguilon is not being selected to play, he is not the easiest character. The outlook is the Spain international, who has six caps, really needs to feel loved to thrive. At Spurs, he is not going to get enough football for that.
Reguilon has spoken publicly of his dissatisfaction with what he perceived to be mixed messaging from Spurs last summer too. “One day is ‘yes’, next day is ‘no’,” he told The Times in March when asked about finding out that he was no longer part of the club’s plans. “I didn’t understand and still don’t understand the situation.”
Reguilon’s dilemma looked to be the opposite of Djed Spence, whose future was also uncertain at the beginning of the summer. Spence impressed throughout pre-season and did enough to convince Postecoglou he deserved a chance. Postecoglou spoke about how the 24-year-old Spence “fits into our football”, which does not apply to Reguilon. Spence replaced Udogie at left-back in the 4-0 victory over Everton. However, Spence, like Reguilon, has since been left out of Spurs’ Europa League squad.
Reguilon spent the first half of the 2023-24 campaign with Manchester United and made 12 appearances in all competitions. United’s head coach Erik ten Hag sanctioned his return to north London in January because Tyrell Malacia and Luke Shaw were close to returning from injury. Malacia did not make a single appearance last season while Shaw returned for four games in February before suffering a problem with his hamstring which kept him out until July.
Reguilon then joined Brentford on loan to provide cover while first-choice full-backs Rico Henry and Aaron Hickey recovered from long-term injuries. He was sent off in a 2-1 defeat to Burnley but was solid defensively and recorded four assists in 16 appearances.
Reguilon impressed at Brentford (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)
Reguilon’s wages were a stumbling block to a permanent move. He has been on around £100,000 a week at Spurs — double the amount Brentford’s highest earners are on. They only covered a portion of his wages during his loan spell.
Brentford made two defensive signings this summer, Sepp van den Berg — who can cover multiple positions — and 18-year-old left-back Jayden Meghoma. All of their signings were aged 23 and below as they looked to build a squad for the long term.
Henry is back in full training but has not played since he suffered an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in a 1-0 defeat to Newcastle United last September. Hickey has suffered a setback and underwent another operation on his hamstring last week, which means he is expected to miss most of the season. Brentford’s head coach Thomas Frank has used right-footed defender Kristoffer Ajer or central midfielder Vitaly Janelt as emergency left-backs. Despite the lack of options, they never seriously considered a reunion with Reguilon.
The lack of genuine interest has left Reguilon, who received his last international cap in September 2021, in a state of limbo. A full-back with great attacking instincts is in danger of spending the next six months stuck on the sidelines.
(Top photo: Andrew Kearns – CameraSport via Getty Images)
