The mighty Spurs £105m double transfer deal that could take club to the next level

Ange Postecoglou’s palpable frustration as a promising season petered out made it abundantly clear that he feels the need for a few changes this summer – and he’s reportedly asked the club to help him find a centre-back, central midfielder and striker ahead of next season.

It’s evident that Tottenham Hotspur’s midfield wasn’t able to deliver the dynamism the Australian wanted – and that he didn’t have a number nine he trusted to get the ball in the net. A centre-back is likely more a matter of providing depth and competition for Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven as much as anything else – so getting the purchases right further up the field will most likely be what makes or break Spurs’ chances of making the top four next season.

In midfield, they’ve been linked repeatedly with Conor Gallagher, and it’s hard to find a good argument against him. He has the qualities Postecoglou is looking for on and off the ball – he’s a sharp passer who can run with the ball and get it forward quickly and a strong tackler who doesn’t let much get past him in defence.

Postecoglou needs midfielder who can play in a high-intensity press and also offer some drive on the ball when they’ve made the turnovers – and the Chelsea man, who is likely to be offloaded for a fee in the region of £50m, makes more turnovers per game than the likes of Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr and the likely-departing Pierre-Emile Højbjerg while also generating more shooting chances than any of them.

There have been other rumours floating around, with Amadou Onana’s name coming up for instance, but the link to Gallagher has stuck around for a year since Chelsea first started battling with Mauricio Pochettino over whether to keep or sell him. With Pochettino now out of the way, it is likely that Gallagher will leave, and almost as likely that Spurs are the beneficiaries.

That will help Postecoglou out, but no amount of added verve in midfield will achieve much if they don’t get somebody to score the goals. Son Heung-Min has taken up a lot of the slack in Harry Kane’s absence but Spurs seem to want to get him back on the left wing and find a natural number nine to take over in the middle.

Santiago Giménez has been spotted at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium taking in a game but the club have been linked with a wide array of strikers, with the only common thread being that they seem to be looking for a ‘genuine’ central striker, someone with the physicality and late movement to find space in the penalty area and who doesn’t necessarily stray too far from it either.

That describes Giménez, but the Feyenoord and Mexico forward has been on horrible form of late and there is a perfectly valid concern over how well he would fare given his current goalscoring trajectory. They may do well to pursue Benjamin Šeško instead.

Wanted by several Premier League clubs, the young Slovenian forward has many of Giménez’s qualities – physical prowess, finishing and the ability to work space in the box – but is trending upwards both in terms of his broader development at RB Leipzig and his goalscoring. Šeško finished the season by scoring in seven consecutive Bundesliga games.

That suggests that he has the goalscoring nous already to be worth a punt, and while Leipzig aren’t keen to sell and indeed hope to extend a contract which has four years left on it, they are a selling club and could have their arm twisted – in any case, he has a release clause set at €65m (£55.4m), so the upper limit isn’t so unreasonable anyway.

The fact that Giménez was spotted visiting Spurs suggests that they want someone who can bully defenders and force their way into goalscoring positions, someone who can finish off quick counter-attacks or direct passing plays, and while an on-form version of the Mexico international offers that, Šeško looks like the safer choice right now.

Spurs could go in any number of directions. The market for number nines will be feverish this summer with a huge range of top teams looking to trade their current strikers in for newer models, and Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have all been linked with Šeško as well at various points, while he has already reportedly rejected an approach from Saudi Arabia. It’s impossible to say how likely it is that Slovenian makes his way to north London, but it’s very definite that Spurs could do with someone cut from his kind of cloth.

Postecoglou came close to bringing Champions League football back to Tottenham in the 2023/24 season, but ultimately fell just a little short – a few key additions could well be all that’s needed to get over the line next year. Based on what they’ve looked for so far, Gallagher and Šeško seem to be the templates for what they want, and perhaps just the best possible targets in their own rights.