Ah, just when it seemed like Tottenham Hotspur were gaining momentum, Gary O'Neil painted north London in Old Gold to pull Ange Postecoglou's side back out of the top four.
It was been a campaign that has tantalised progress but still threatened to stamp the same old inconsistency that has marred Spurs over recent years.
Heung-min Son, Yves Bissouma and Pape Matar Sarr are back from international tournaments and while Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie picked up injuries recently, the spark and fluidity within this side should now be starting to coalesce into one system.
And, moreover, Wolverhampton Wanderers' unexpected victory at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has only allowed Aston Villa to take a two-point lead in fourth place, so Postecoglou will have a firm belief in his team's ability to craft a sequence of positive results, with the new signings combining to charge the efforts.
These new additions – players such as James Maddison, Micky van de Ven, Gugliemo Vicario and Brennan Johnson – are all expected to keep leading roles within a Tottenham team challenging for prominence in the Champions League in the years to come.
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This refreshing approach in the market must now be sustained to filter away the transfer discordance under chairman Daniel Levy, ensuring deals for flops such as Djed Spence do not occur again.
The fee Spurs paid for Djed Spence
In July 2022, Tottenham completed the £20m signing of Spence from Championship side Middlesbrough, with the dynamic right-back a hot prospect after an excellent loan spell with Nottingham Forest.
Brian Laws provided unreserved praise for the rising star after his short-term stint at the City Ground, where he scored three goals and provided five assists across 50 appearances in all competitions, aiding the Tricky Trees in their successful promotion push.
The former Forest star said: "He has been the standout player in the Forest side and we are talking about a full-back. Full-backs do not tend to get many headlines. He grabs them by the handful. In every single game, he has a positive impact.
"He has power going forward, he has electric pace, he has an abundance of skill, he can drop his shoulder, step over, go inside or outside — he is a major threat. I’ve been impressed with his one-to-one defending. He is decent on the back post, he is strong in the air. There is nothing I have seen that you could call a weakness.”
Effusive praise, but not without merit. Spence had indeed produced some complete performances down the right flank and looked like the player to dominate at right-back for Tottenham over the coming years.
£20m was no small sum though, and given that then Spurs boss Antonio Conte expressed that the acquisition was not actually his idea, more that he greenlit it after Levy and co pushed for an agreement, there was always the risk that it would go wrong.
Djed Spence's Spurs career
Spence, now aged 23, has failed to make his mark at Tottenham, having been loaned out to Serie A side Genoa for the 2023/24 campaign.
Once hailed for his “swashbuckling” style by pundit Ian Wright, the £25k-per-week whiz only completed six showings for the Lilywhites before completing a loan move to Rennes on January deadline day last year, and despite some flashes of ability in France, completing 89% of his passes and succeeding with 63% of his dribbles and 61% of his duels, as per Sofascore, Postecoglou was not convinced.
In fairness, the full-back wasn't really given much of a chance and failed to receive more than three minutes of Premier League action under Conte, underscoring the fact that the Italian gaffer simply didn't agree with the purchase.
But he has absolutely nothing positive to show from his time at Tottenham and may well be an even worse signing than Bryan Gil, who is widely accepted to be a disappointment at the club after making the move from Sevilla for £21m in 2021, with Erik Lamela heading the other way too.
Gil, also 23 years old, has not done anything of note this term but at least he has been a part of Postecoglou's plans, earning 11 displays and showing glimpses of fleet-footed quality.
Blighted by injuries once more this season, Spence's loan spell with Leeds United was cut short last month and he has since moved to Italy. The fact he keeps getting shipped out on loan would lend itself to the very fact that he has been a more pointless acquisition than Gil.
Of course, there will still be hope that Spence can turn the tide but it certainly doesn't look like he will take Porro's place in Spurs' starting line-up any time soon, and after being left as an unused substitute for Genoa's past two league encounters, there will be heightened concerns that he is set to endure further months of disgruntlement.
Djed Spence's current market value in 2024
According to CIES Football Observatory's valuation model, Spence is currently valued at just £4m, which marks a £16m depreciation in less than two years, at a stage of his career when the trajectory should only be pointing skyward.
This 80% decrease in value is not the nail-on-the-coffin tag that could end his hopes of flourishing, but he will need to sort out fitness issues and stabilise his form so that the figure starts to rise once again.
# Dribbling
# Blocking
# Passing
# Tackling
Source: WhoScored
As the table above shows, Spence has much natural quality and Tottenham were not exactly foolish to push for his signature, but Neil Warnock once famously said: "You could be playing for Bromley next year, or you could be in the Premier League."
Only time will tell if Spence will rise to the task and cement himself at the highest level, but it's unlikely that he will find a fruitful career down N17.
No club will hit the mark with every transfer venture but Tottenham can mitigate the inaccuracy by maintaining this new method that has, in theory, worked so well under Postecoglou so far.
Levy engineered the transfer of Porro from Sporting Lisbon just over one year ago and there is little question that the Spaniard's performances have eclipsed anything that Spence mustered for Tottenham.
Ultimately, Spence's signing hasn't worked out and when summer comes around all parties must accept this fact candidly and work on a solution to end Spence's stay and allow him to build his career up elsewhere.