Tottenham Hotspur’s scouting network is a joke, according to former sporting director Damien Comolli.

Spurs are sitting 12th in the Premier League after 11 games and their transfer business is under heavy scrutiny, with the majority of their signings over the last two years struggling to adapt to the demands of the Premier League.

Expensive buys like Roberto Soldado, Paulinho, Vlad Chiriches and Federico Fazio have failed to live up to their price tags, while £10million left-back Ben Davies is being kept out of the team by Danny Rose.

Their technical director Franco Baldini is currently in charge of their affairs in this area but Comolli has brutally laid bare the club’s failings by revealing their understaffed recruitment team is a laughing stock amongst the world’s biggest clubs.

He told the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast: “If the board or the chairman feel the club is not functioning properly it’s up to them to sit down and review the situation.

“From the outside, what I can tell you is that among the top 20 clubs in the world, in terms of wealth, Spurs are the only ones who haven’t got a scouting network.

“They are clearly understaffed in this aspect. It has become a kind of joke in the scouting community. They say, ‘have you seen a Spurs scout?’ You don’t see them. I don’t think they’ve got any.

“[When I was at Tottenham] we had 12 full-time scouts. We had a great scouting staff. The scout we had in Italy at the time is now the sporting director at Sampdoria after being sporting director at Monaco. The one we had in Spain is now head of recruitment for a big club in Spain. The one we had in Argentina is now head of recruitment for a club in Italy, so we had a strong scouting network which allowed us to sign all those players. Now it doesn’t seem to be the case.”

And their problems don’t end there, according to Comolli: “They have this fantastic [training] facility that Daniel Levy and I fought very hard to build but they need some brain power in there.

“If you look at the top clubs in the Premier League, all of them have got five fitness coaches and five physiotherapists just for the first-team but I don’t think Spurs have got anywhere near that at the moment.

“There is a lot to be done to address this situation.”