José Mourinho says clear-out of fringe players at Tottenham is inevitable
José Mourinho has suggested that a clear-out of fringe Tottenham players has to happen. The manager, who has added the striker Carlos Vinícius on loan from Benfica and wants another centre-half, with Chelsea’s Antonio Rudiger a target, says that he prefers to work with a squad of 22 outfield players. With Vinícius he now has 27.
Mourinho has made it clear that Danny Rose has no future at Spurs – the left-back does not even have a shirt number – and Cameron Carter-Vickers, the other player without a number, is expected to leave. Although the main transfer deadline is on Monday night, Championship clubs can make signings until 16 October.
Mourinho has decisions to make on Ryan Sessegnon and Jack Clarke, who joined last summer for £25m and £10m respectively. Both are under-21s and would not take spaces on the 25man squad list.
Sessegnon has been in only one match-day squad this season – at Lokomotiv Plovdiv, when he did not get off the bench – and there are numerous clubs that would like him on loan.
Clarke spent last season on loan in the Championship at Leeds and Queens Park Rangers, not starting a league game at either, and he is not in Mourinho’s plans.
Mourinho is open to moving on
Juan Foyth but will he sell a bigger name to raise funds for the new centrehalf or simply to balance the books? The loan fee for Vinícius, the joint-top scorer in last season’s Primeira Liga, is €3m (£2.7m) – the option to buy is €42m – and it has taken Spurs’s net spend on fees this summer to a little over £50m. Mourinho has said he would not stand in the way of Serge Aurier if the right-back wanted a fresh challenge.
“The transfer window is in two directions and it’s possible that we could let a couple of players leave,” Mourinho said. “It’s [also] possible we could let a couple of young players go and experience playing. For sure, we are not going to keep every player in the squad over normal numbers. I like to work normally with a squad of 22 players plus the keepers and we are not going to be far from that number.
“My job is not to keep the players happy, it’s to get the best possible results. But I agree that it’s impossible to keep everybody happy when you have so many players.”