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5. Vlad Chiriches
The lone defender among the 7 players signed with the Bale money, Romania’s Vlad Chiriches was bought in from Steaua Bucharest for a fee of £8.5m, and he started the 2013-14 season strongly, forming a partnership at the heart of Spurs’ defence alongside Michael Dawson. The Romanian even scored a tremendous goal in a 1-2 win over Fulham in December.
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Unfortunately, despite this good start to his career at White Hart Lane, things went south quickly for Chiriches after the departure of Villas-Boas at the end of 2013. New boss Tim Sherwood clearly didn’t trust the Romanian – and a video that emerged of him stumbling drunkenly out of a Bucharest nightclub in January 2014 didn’t help matters.
Chiriches was given a second chance to impress when Mauricio Pochettino took over at Spurs in the summer of 2014, but clearly the Argentine was unconvinced, preferring a defensive partnership between Jan Vertonghen and Federico Fazio. The Romanian made just 8 starts and was sent off in a 3-0 loss to Stoke, with the game being his final appearance for the club.
The summer of 2015 saw Chiriches sold to Napoli for a fee of £4.5m, and he ended up spending 4 injury-hit seasons there before moving to Sassuolo on loan at the end of the 2018-19 season. Overall, the defender was a major flop at Tottenham – second only to Soldado.
Rating: 1/5
