Much has been said of late regarding Spurs transfer strategy. ‘Negligent.’ ‘Disgraceful.’ ‘Clueless.’ I’m not entirely sure.

This is not a blind defence of Levy and ENIC. Some of the criticism has been fair. One striker in the first two or three games of the season isn’t in keeping with a club of our stature. Games halfway round the world before the opener caused bemusement. One attacking signing in four windows doesn’t scream ‘AMBITION!’ But the extremity of the meltdown has been surprising.

I’m not claiming to have a full understanding of football economics, but clearly there is some rationale as to why many players leave late in the window. Examples in point are Berbatov, Bale, Pedro, and possibly Berahino. And there are some seriously big buyers involved. Are they also being negligent leaving it so late?

Or is it just the domino effect, the way it is?

Is it now the norm for a selling club to replace before it buys?

Wouldn’t clubs like WBA be held to ransom should they sell up for a big fee early and then try to replace the departed?

The buying club doesn’t hold all the cards and never has – Levy is not calling all the shots. Is he really choosing to leave deals late? What would be the benefit?

The buying club doesn’t hold all the cards and never has – Levy is not calling all the shots. Is he really choosing to leave deals late? What would be the benefit? Some have suggested it’s to save some dosh – not sure about that one – why would someone be cheaper later?

Even when a behemoth does make an early signing, i.e bidding £50 million for a starlet like Sterling. Man City despite their financial power still had to wait for the selling club, Liverpool, to conclude their own transfers, like signing Firmino before the deal happened. This is also relevant to another transfer we ‘took too long over’ – Valbuena signed for Lyon just before we snared N’Jie. I wonder if the criticism would be less severe if the window closed before the beginning of the season?

Also worth covering is our strategy for adding players lower down the pitch. What we did do well is buy promising defenders early, to give us two for each position at the back.

Pochettino isn’t daft, and Levy even less so, they want and need us to be as good as possible, not least for their own sake. But we don’t seem to have done anything in the middle of the park. Our lack of interest in Cabaye seemed strange, perhaps Pardew promised him every game approaching a home-nation Euros. Could we have done the same?

But in trying to work out what’s happened, we can surmise that with a number of supposedly top class prospects, who Pochettino believes can grow together for the medium-term good of the club, we are waiting for that one key player to become available who has a very high chance of being a success. Especially at a cost of around £15 million. It is more about making the right signing, not any signing, we don’t want any more Paulinhos.

Perhaps we identified a couple and there have been difficulties, such as interest from CL clubs, their current club not interested in selling, the player not being sure about moving. Again, there are so many factors involved, it’s not just down to us. It’s not just dastardly Daniel making his “net spend” graph look nice.

I can’t say I’m best pleased with 1 point from 6, but the challenge might be to take a step back for a minute to consider all that’s going on behind closed doors

The window isn’t over, so we can’t judge completely yet, because we still might fail to purchase what we need, and it might well be fair to say that in the whole of Europe, there must be a couple we could have added. But the baying mob appears to be growing. The lack of perspective seems to be increasing. The ability to think logically, I’m sorry to say, looks like it’s going out of fashion.

It’s easy to be frustrated, I can’t say I’m best pleased with 1 point from 6, but the challenge might be to take a step back for a minute to consider all that’s going on behind closed doors, admittedly not an easy task. The beautiful game is full of ugliness – sneaking, sniping and shafting, but everyone is just trying to do what they can for their own club. It might not look pretty, but it might be worth waiting to see just how good we’re looking at the beginning of September.