Spurs signing a Richarlison clone is funny but Werner loan makes perfect January sense

It’s very, very easy to laugh at the very idea of Spurs signing infamous Chelsea flop Timo Werner.

Fun, too: we’re absolutely not about to tell you not to laugh at the idea of Spurs signing infamous Chelsea flop Timo Werner. Lord knows we all need something to laugh at, and this ticks a lot of boxes.

The sheer scale of Werner’s floppery and the club at which it occurred makes him joining Spurs almost unbeatable on the Easy Footy Banter scale.

The road from Chelsea to Tottenham is often circuitous but also one frequently made, despite the two clubs’ mutual enmity restricting direct trade between them to minimal levels. Spurs hiring former Chelsea managers of assorted pedigree has become a running joke, to the extent that on the back of Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte’s bitter ends to their own Spurs careers – and Andre Villas-Boas really wasn’t all that long ago either – it was felt by many that the mere presence of Chelsea’s name on the CVs might count against Thomas Tuchel or Graham Potter when Spurs were on yet another mission to appoint yet another new manager last year.

So, yes, another Chelsea name at Spurs is funny before you even get to the identity of that Chelsea name. Werner became a byword for disastrous big-money signing during his brief and inglorious first stab at English football. He scored only 10 league goals across two painful seasons at Stamford Bridge and rarely has any striker at any big club looked quite so wretchedly unsure of himself in front of goal as poor old Timo. Throw in the unfortunate habit of finding himself offside on many of the few occasions he did manage to put the ball in the net, and you have a rich comedy seam to mine.

Spurs know all this, because their fans were – for the mutual enmity reasons discussed earlier – among the most vocal enjoyers of all that content, but also because ‘big-money striker who can’t score goals, misses countless easy chances and is offside on the few occasions he does manage to score’ is precisely what Tottenham went through last season themselves with Richarlison.

There’s also the fact that what Spurs are still trying to replace in their attack is the clinical composure in front of goal that was provided for years and years and years by Harry Kane. There’s no shame in the fact Spurs haven’t managed to replace that instantly; it’s almost impossibly difficult to do so and the fact they’ve managed to cope at all is huge testament to Heung-min Son’s own xG-busting mastery when offered any kind of sight of goal

Bringing in another forward who, with the exception of one astonishing season in Germany that looks increasingly like an absurd outlier that earned him that ill-fated first move to England, performs well under his xG appears on the face of it to add little to Spurs’ attacking force and risks simply doubling-down on the failings of all their attackers bar Son.

But – and the good news for you lot if we’re wrong here is that it will make the whole thing even funnier – we think this really might actually work.

Now to be clear, we’re not using ‘work’ here to mean we think Werner is going to score 15 goals in the second half of the season and propel Spurs to the Double. It’s a woollier sense of the word, where ‘work’ means Spurs take on no real long-term risk (they are a club who have long since reached banter saturation) but have better and deeper options in attack by adding to their thin and shallow squad a player with some pedigree and plenty of Angeball-adjacent attributes.

For one, even during Werner’s darkest days at Chelsea there was rarely criticism of his endeavour, commitment or workrate. If anything, Clive, he at times almost appeared if anything to be trying too hard. Those are potent attributes in a Postecoglou team, though, where his pace and off-the-ball effort will make him a significant contributor to their pressing game.

On the ball, he is a player who stretches defences and pulls players out of position. It might not ultimately show in the bare cupboard of his goals and assist statistics, but it’s easy to see how he might create space and opportunities for others in a team where goals are, by both design and necessity, shared out across all players in all positions with the exception of Guglielmo Vicario who really is letting the side down and needs to pull his finger out.

January windows are notoriously fraught with difficulty and littered with disaster. Again, Spurs know about this because they’ve been wrong as often as anyone else – adding Ryan Nelsen and Louis Saha to a possible title challenge, for instance. But this is also not a window Spurs can allow to pass them by. Really, they need three players this month and ideally they need those players in the next week. Especially the centre-back, but that’s another story.

The injury problems in a squad that never had capacity to handle them are well-known, the suspension problems self-inflicted but just as damaging, and now three key players lost to AFCON and the Asian Cup.

Son’s likely absence until mid-February given South Korea’s predicted progress meant Spurs had to do something in a position where good January options are difficult to find. Their forward options are stretched paper thin. Richarlison’s recent upturn in form has been enormously welcome, but Brennan Johnson is still having to play far more than most would have expected in his first season, Dejan Kulusevski – statistically Spurs’ second best finisher – is often having to occupy James Maddison’s advanced midfield role while others such as Ivan Perisic and Manor Solomon are long-term absentees.

Spurs find themselves in urgent need of another body in attack, but with no great desire to throw huge amounts of money at the issue given the well-known January pitfalls.

If Werner’s Chelsea career had never happened, a six-month loan with option (rather than obligation) to buy for a player with his attributes would look like exactly what it is: a canny piece of squad management in a difficult situation requiring creative solutions.

It’s not perfect, few January transfers are. But Werner is neither the first nor last big-money signing to struggle at Chelsea and he wouldn’t be the first to show plenty more elsewhere in a different system under a different manager in a different environment.