Why Spurs’ £34m ‘nightmare’ signing could end up being a luxury buy

Tottenham Hotspur’s squad has a few holes which need filling this summer, but few would have had right-back down as anything approaching a priority – nevertheless, a new report from Italy suggests that they are pushing to sign Fiorentina full-back Michael Kayode. It would be a slightly surprising move for Spurs, but would it be a good one?

Kayode is a 19-year-old who broke into Fiorentina’s first team at the start of last season and firmly established himself as their best option at right wing-back, playing 37 senior games and picking up a goal and four assists over the course of a season which also saw him pick up his first three caps for Italy’s Under-21s. Now, apparently, Spurs have identified him as a major summer target – a situation described as a “nightmare” for La Viola’s fans, according to Sport Witness, who picked up on the original reports from Florence.

According to those same reports, Fiorentina would consider selling him in order to balance the books despite signing the defender (who is also eligible to play for Nigeria through parentage) to a new long-term deal just a few months ago - €40m (£34m) is touted as a ballpark figure.

The first question is how likely it is that Kayode would live up to that kind of transfer fee, and the answer is that it looks perfectly plausible. Kayode has many of the attributes required to be a fabulous all-round full-back already and his level of performance in Italy and in the Europa Conference League was exceptionally high for months on end.

He’s a superb tackler who is particularly impressive in close-quarters one-on-one situations – he has exceptional focus and a natural timing of his challenges that makes him very hard to get past on the run, and he reads the game well enough (and has enough fundamental pace and strength) to keep up with opposing wingers’ runs off the ball as well.

Very little got past him last season and he made very few significant errors, which given his inexperience bodes extremely well for his long-term future – but he still needs to do some work to become a fully-fledged attacking threat even though he’s good with the ball at his feet himself and has the quality and confidence to gain ground by beating opposing players on the run and getting down the flank quickly.

While he gets into good areas going forward, his passing range is relatively limited, he isn’t a great crosser and he doesn’t seem to have the vision to pick out defence-splitting balls. The technical quality is there, at least, so it’s likely something that could be developed, but the early indications are that he’s an athletic but ultimately relatively defensive full-back who isn’t at his best on the overlap.

That doesn’t necessarily make him exactly the kind of full-back Ange Postecoglou wants at Spurs, and as we’ve seen from Destiny Udogie’s first season he will want players who press on up the pitch in possession, so there will be some adaptation for Kayode to do if he comes to North London, but he has a lot of the qualities Postecoglou values and looks excellent off the ball in high-pressing formations.

So in short, Kayode is a fine defender who could easily become a high-class all-round full-back and pay that €40m back handsomely. But there’s another question Spurs would have to ask themselves before they make a bid – is right-back a position they need to spend a substantial chunk of their summer budget on?

Spurs already have an impressive first-choice player in that slot in the shape of 24-year-old Pedro Porro, and it seems fair to assume that they signed him under the assumption that he would be their man for the next four of five years at least, which makes one question why they’d want a player who would expect to be playing regularly before long. It’s even harder to justify when you factor in the fact that Porro was, for the most part, very good last season.

Spurs need a striker, at least one midfielder and some reinforcements down the left as a bare minimum, and between the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules and Daniel Levy’s tendency towards tight-fistedness in the transfer market, it seems hard to find a way to excuse such a significant outlay on a player who, although already good and talented enough to be even better, doesn’t fill a position of genuine, urgent need.

Kayode could well become a brilliant player in years to come – but it’s hard to imagine that he’d be the player to make the difference between fifth place last season and fourth the next, and that, surely, is the kind of man that Spurs need to focus on finding right now.