Perhaps more than any other team in the traditional ‘big six’, Tottenham Hotspur seem to have had the most mixed fortune in the transfer market over the last decade or so.
For example, for every incredible player they’ve signed, like Christian Eriksen and Heung-min Son, they have signed several unmitigated flops, like Tanguy Ndombele, Vincent Jansen and Ryan Sessegnon.
However, the North Londoners have also welcomed in a number of stars who don’t quite fit into either camp, including one signed by André Villas-Boas, who was at one point compared to the iconic Paul Gascoigne, only to leave for free years later.
Gascoigne's Spurs career
After growing to prominence with Newcastle United in the mid-1980s, Gascoigne secured a £2.2m move to Spurs in the summer of 1988, which was both a British record fee and a shock for Sir Alex Ferguson, who thought the talented Englishman would be coming to Manchester United.
In his debut season for the Lilywhites, the Gateshead-born star made 36 appearances across all competitions, in which he scored seven goals, provided one assist and entertained fans up and down the country with his mercurial ability before scoring another seven goals and producing one more assist in his second season in North London.
However, it was in his third and final campaign with the club that the former Newcastle ace cemented himself in Spurs history, as despite going off injured in the 16th minute in the final, he played in every round up to that point and racked up six goals in the process, including an iconic free-kick against fierce rivals Arsenal in the semi-finals.
The 57-capped international was then sold to Serie A side Lazio for around £5.5m that summer, with a final tally of 33 goals and six assists in 111 appearances for the club. While Gascoigne wasn’t a Spurs player for long, he remains a legendary figure among the fans, so eyebrows were raised when someone was compared to him in 2018.
Erik Lamela's Spurs career
Yes, the former Spurs player who was once compared to Gascoigne was Erik Lamela, and before the pitchforks come out, we weren’t the ones that made it. That honour belongs to another former Spurs great, Glenn Hoddle.
Surprisingly, the former England manager made the comparison quite late into the Argentine’s stint in North London, as he argued that the way he held off defenders in 2018 was similar to Gascoigne’s sometimes combative nature.
However, that is where the comparison ends, as while the former Roma star showed real moments of quality during his time in North London, like that Puskas winning goal against Arsenal, he was far too injury-prone and inconsistent to go down as a great.
That said, despite costing around £25m in 2013, he probably did just about enough during his eight years at the club to not go down as a flop either.
In those eight seasons, before he joined Sevilla for free in a deal that saw Bryan Gil go the other way, the Carapachay-born ace scored 37 goals and provided 44 assists in 257 appearances, which equates to a rather middling average of a goal involvement every 3.17 games.
Tottenham
257
37
44
0.31
Sevilla
92
16
7
0.25
AS Roma
67
21
14
0.52
River Plate
36
4
6
0.27
AEK Athens
8
0
1
0.12
Ultimately, while he cost a lot of money for the time and didn’t quite live up to expectations, it would be rather unfair to label Lamela as a complete flop, but one thing we can be sure of is that the comparison to Gascoigne was way off the mark.
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