Tottenham Hotspur's squad is probably of a collective quality that surpasses anything since the bleakness of the Champions League final defeat against Liverpool in 2019.
The club has cried out for cohesion and focus over recent years, with the acquisitions made and appointments taken since Mauricio Pochettino's dismissal in the months after coming tantalisingly close to the pinnacle falling flat more often than not.
Too many fell by the wayside; too often Tottenham regressed after periods of promise. With Ange Postecoglou now at the helm, there is fresh belief that something special could be achieved in the years to come.
Lucrative spending was enforced last summer, with James Maddison, Micky van de Ven and Brennan Johnson among those to join the fold. Chairman Daniel Levy enabled this outlay because after languishing to an eighth-place Premier League finish last year it was clear that Harry Kane would be shipped on.
The Three Lions captain signed for Bayern Munich in a deal worth a potential £100m, and with one year remaining on his contract, it was a no-brainer, albeit a bitter pill to swallow.
The money recouped certainly looks to have been reinvested more wisely than last time Tottenham agreed to a high-price sale when Gareth Bale made the move to Spain to join Real Madrid.
Gareth Bale's importance to Spurs
Tottenham signed Bale from Southampton for just £5m back in 2007 as a talented teenage left-back, with Bale opting for Spurs over Manchester United as he believed he stood a better chance of rising to prominence.
Bale didn't enjoy the greatest of starts to his career at White Hart Lane and actually endured a 24-match winless streak before finally registering a victory and thus enjoying incremental growth toward the forefront of the Premier League.
Converted to a right-sided attacker, the now-retired Bale posted 26 goals and 14 assists across 44 appearances in 2012/13 before completing a world-record £85m transfer to Real Madrid in 2013, something that appeared to be a good deal for Tottenham, boosted with staggering riches to inject back into the squad.
Of course, it didn't go to plan, and the Lilywhites would see the 'magnificent seven' largely fail to grow into the Tottenham shirt, with Christian Eriksen the only one who truly cemented himself as a standout star of the era to come.
Still, Pochettino arrived and led Tottenham to regular seasons in the Champions League and some enthralling fights for silverware on the domestic front too. Kane's emergence also helped to compensate for the loss of the talisman and then some.
Given what Tottenham endured after Bale's sale, actually improving under Pochettino, it's probably not the most rueful piece of business of recent history, with the loss of Kyle Walker to Manchester City actually having more dire consequences.
Why Spurs will rue the day they sold Kyle Walker
Walker is one of the most salient names on English shores, playing an integral role for Manchester City in recent years, but he was sensational for Tottenham and forged 227 displays in the capital.
Arriving from Sheffield United for a fee believed to be around £5m way back in 2009, Walker, 19 at the time, was actually considered to be a cut below fellow Blade Kyle Naughton, who completed the transfer to Tottenham with him, but Walker proved to eclipse his Sheffield-born peer and became a regular presence in the starting line-up after a couple of bedding-in seasons.
GK – Heurelho Gomes
RB – Kyle Walker
CB – Michael Dawson
CB – Sebastien Bassong
LB – Gareth Bale
CM – Luka Modric
CM – Tom Huddlestone
RM – David Bentley
LM – Niko Kranjcar
ST – Eidur Gudjohnsen
ST – Peter Crouch
After playing a key part in the Tottenham team that finished third and second in the top-flight across Walker's final two terms at the club, he was pulled toward a new venture, one that Tottenham had little choice but to acquiesce to.
Indeed, the allure of Manchester City's project under Pep Guardiola was too much to resist and the England international completed a world-record £53m transfer in 2017, the most ever spent on a defender at the time.
What Kyle Walker has achieved after Spurs
Manchester City get dragged down for their seemingly bottomless pit of resources but, under Guardiola, the Premier League champions don't half-strike with precision in the transfer market.
A certain neighbour of the Etihad Stadium could certainly jot down a trick or two, with Walker signed from Tottenham for a lofty figure but remains one of Europe's standout full-backs to this day, described as a "machine" by performance analyst Austin Reynolds.
Across all competitions, Walker has amassed 290 appearances for the Citizens, scoring six goals and supplying 20 assists, with his performances for one of the game's most illustrious squads leading to Guardiola praising him as "irreplaceable" and his Three Lions teammate Jordan Pickford dubbing him "the best right-back in the world."
As per FBref, the veteran England international ranks among the top 3% of full-backs across Europe's top five leagues over the past year for pass completion, the top 4% for passes attempted and the top 9% for progressive passes per 90, showcasing his elite, underrated ball-playing ability.
While he's no longer producing breakneck dribbles down the right channel with the same regularity, he'll be 34 years old by the end of the campaign and remains a key member of Guardiola's system, adapting and reshaping his skill set.
And of course, that's not to say that he doesn't have it in him anymore, completing 68% of his attempted dribbles in the Premier League this season (0.7 per game) while averaging 5.1 ball recoveries per game, as per Sofascore.
Walker's sale, admittedly, was too good to turn down for a Tottenham side that were thriving under Pochettino's management and saw an opportunity to cash in lucratively and reinvest shrewdly.
The full-back's replacement, Aurier, hardly captured the same kind of performance, with Matt Doherty and Emerson Royal also flattering to deceive at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before, finally, Pedro Porro arrived from Sporting Lisbon in 2023 and has now been praised for his "titanic" efforts this season by The Athletic's Charlie Eccleshare.
Rumours across recent months have suggested that lightning might strike twice and City are interested in replacing Walker with Porro, who was on the Etihad Stadium side's books in his early days – but that's one for another day.
Ultimately, Tottenham's decision to cash in on Walker for a staggering amount of money was a good decision, though mishandling the Premier League legend's replacement can only go down as a colossal misfire and Levy must rue the whole ordeal, itching like an old wound, before Porro transferred in and has finally offered some genuine quality.
Let's hope Manchester City don't take a leaf from their own book in the transfer market soon, ay.
