There have been times over the past few years when Tottenham Hotspur’s supporters have dared to wonder whether their club might actually have cracked it. On the pitch, under a forward-thinking coach, they have outperformed big-spending rivals with a team full of young, much-coveted talents. They have a splendid new training ground and are building a new 61,000-capacity stadium that will be the envy of many. As Daniel Levy put it just a few months ago: “It’s a great time to be a Spurs fan.”

It surely is — and yet, beneath it all, beneath every bit of praise, has been the nagging feeling that progress on the pitch will be hard to sustain unless Tottenham adjust to the realities of the market that has