Summer '21 transfer lunacy and overpayment

[selassie]

Ok, so there’s a couple of profile pieces out there now about Tomiyasu - sounds like he’s quick, v. good at 1v1s, calm in possession, a good distributor with both feet and strong in the air (6’2, fwiw).

As a RB, it sounds like he’s going to be more defensive than offensive, so if I had to guess at the thinking here I would say this is to a) balance Tierney down the left and free him up to get up and down that side with less worries, and b) protect our big, centrepiece defensive investment in White by bracketing him with two fast, aerially dominant players.

I think we might get away without the rampaging attacking RB because Ødegaard naturally drifts towards the right allowing him to double-up with the winger on that side. That’s probably bad news for Pepe, who I think really needs that overlapping fullback to be effective - think we’ll probably see Saka on the right now.

Whether it will work like that in practice is another matter, but that’s my thoughts on why we’ve gone for this guy.

The only thing that worries me about this signing is that he appears to be our fourth option for the right back spot. If reports are to be believed, our number 1 option was Hakimi, that was always nothing more than a pipedream and clearly a big step down for him. After that, we were linked with Tyler Adams of Leipzig, again a step down right now for him. The third option appeared to be Emerson Royal who joined Spurs, if reports were to be believed, he chose Spurs ahead of us.

So we signed what appears to be our fourth option in Tomiyasu who Spurs deemed not good enough for them.

Despite the above, I have also read profile pieces and seen bits and pieces of him in action on You Tube and Tomiyasu looks decent enough and a very good prospect, but was this signing a desperate last minute move after all our favoured targets chose not to pursue a move?