Tottenham Hotspur have improved since Ange Postecoglou‘s appointment last summer. However, there is still work to be done to bring the club to the desired standard, competing at the forefront against Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Moreover, last term’s troubles severed hopes of playing in Europe this term, and club record scorer Harry Kane opted to leave the Premier League for Bayern Munich, illuminating the need for sweeping change.

While the season has been characterised by an ebb and flow in performance, Tottenham are building and have welcomed a score of fresh faces.

There is still flotsam to be shifted through, with centre-midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg the highest-profile squad member who could leave sooner rather than later.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s Spurs future

Hojbjerg arrived from Southampton and Tottenham knew they’d secured a bargain. Joining for just £15m after handing in a transfer request, the Dane’s industriousness and command in the engine room was perfect for then-manager Jose Mourinho’s ideology.

But the wind has changed down N17 and Spurs, led by enterprising Postecoglou, no longer hold Hojbjerg at the centre of their plans, the player having started just six Premier League matches this season, usually due to a lack of usual options.

He is certainly not a bad player, ranking among the top 20% of midfielders across Europe’s top five leagues and European competitions over the past year for pass completion and the top 11% for progressive passes per 90, as per FBref, but he is not mobile or creative enough in possession to suit the play Spurs now play.

As such, rumours of his sale have been rife over the past eight months or so, with Manchester United curious last summer and, more recently, heavily linked with a move away in January, though no move materialised, with the 28-year-old actually rejecting concrete bids from Lyon.

Combative and composed, Hojbjerg appears destined for departure but he’s certainly not the worst midfielder in Tottenham’s recent history to have played for a number of years, with Moussa Sissoko not likely to be remembered all that fondly despite making 202 appearances for the Lilywhites.

Spurs’ signing of Moussa Sissoko

Tottenham signed the 6 foot 1 Sissoko from Newcastle United on a five-year deal for £30m back in 2016, with the versatile Frenchman having impressed at St. James’ Park despite the club’s relegation, prompting him to push for a transfer.

The player admitted that his first year at Spurs was “the worst season of my career” and he managed just eight starts in the Premier League, failing to score and supplying just three assists.

Pundit Chris Sutton even slammed Sissoko for being a “bad buy” sooner after his acquisition, lamenting the “disappointment” and questioning whether funding could have been better placed towards a different profile of player.

His strength and athleticism were always a staple of his performance, however, and he did manage to rectify his time at the club and become an important player under Mauricio Pochettino and then Mourinho.

While he did not suffer the unrelenting misery of, say, Tanguy Ndombele, he cost a pretty penny indeed and earned a healthy salary of £80k-per-week across his five campaigns in north London, meaning that he totalled an outlay of £50.8m including the initial transfer.

This hardly represented the best value for money as chairman Daniel Levy sought to cement Tottenham at the forefront of European football, as he never emerged as one of the better players in the Premier League in his position throughout his time at the club.

Given that he was sold to Watford for just £2.5m in 2021 – taking the money spent on him to £48.3m net – after falling out of favour under Nuno Espirito Santo, Spurs slumping to sixth and seventh across his final two years at the club, he can hardly go down as one of the finest purchases under Levy’s command.

Hojbjerg, by comparison, has maintained a decent level of performance throughout, whereas Sissoko failed to hit an average over 1.0 across any defensive metric during his final season in Tottenham colours.

Moreover, he was ineffectual in attack, posting just three goals and two assists across his final two terms at the outfit.

Of course, Hojbjerg is not defined by his goals and assists and neither, really, is Sissoko, but Hojbjerg’s nearing exit falls more down to the fact that he is unsuited to the system, whereas Sissoko was unable to string together any real consistency, falling by the wayside after building himself from that poor start to life in London.

The Denmark international has completed 89% of his passes in the Premier League this season while averaging 3.5 ball recoveries and 1.0 tackles per match, but a game average of 0.2 key passes really doesn’t speak of energy and invention that Postecoglou would be endeared by.

Perhaps this all falls into the same ballpark: neither player has managed to sustain stellar showings with the regularity needed to secure success at Tottenham.

Sissoko’s work rate would have made him, at his peak, an attractive option for Postecoglou, but ultimately he was part of a disappointing decline after the halcyon days of Pochettino’s reign, and supporters will now hope for a sustained change of track that could finally bring some silverware to a club desperate for such success.

Some might put forth the argument that he enjoyed some success at Tottenham, salvaging a prominent position after the early issues, but it’s not enough to justify the big price tag and wages that drained the outfit.

Given that Chelsea signed N’Golo Kante for £32m and Liverpool purchased Sadio Mane for £36m that same window, it’s fair to say that investment could have been placed elsewhere for far greater results.

Now, Tottenham will hope to have learned from their chequered past in the market, but only time will tell if Postecoglou’s blossoming project will wither or finally achieve silver-laden results.