If Tottenham Hotspur were a ship, it would be stabilising after the abating of a roiling storm, with Ange Postecoglou's side fighting for Champions League qualification after slumping to an eighth-placed Premier League finish last year.
Top four is the lighthouse guiding Spurs toward a new era of prominence, but Postecoglou needs time to craft the team he envisages, having already established a solid foundation with an attractive style of play and some successful transfer additions, the likes of James Maddison and Micky van de Ven excelling.
Just as importantly, much deadwood has been shipped on, with Eric Dier ousted under new management after struggling last year. Van de Ven has taken his place in central defence and it's hardly panning out to be a poor move.
What was once said about Eric Dier
Tottenham signed Dier back in 2014, securing his services from Sporting Lisbon for a fee of approximately £4m, and while he was highly regarded throughout the early years of his Lilywhites career, he fell by the wayside in the late phase.
GK – Hugo Lloris
RB – Kyle Naughton
CB – Younes Kaboul
CB – Eric Dier (G 90+3)
LB – Danny Rose
CM – Nabil Bentaleb
CM – Etienne Capoue
RM – Aaron Lennon
AM – Erik Lamela
LM – Christian Eriksen
ST – Emmanuel Adebayor
Dier amassed 365 appearances over a career of servitude and while he endured a bleak finish, he was certainly considered a top talent back in the day, with journalist Matt Law even reporting back in 2016 that Mauricio Pochettino had transformed the versatile player into England's own version of Sergio Busquets.
Admittedly, there are similarities; while Dier was almost exclusively utilised in a centre-back role during the later stage of his Tottenham career, he was frequently deployed as a fifth defender, tasked with build-up play and even studying the Barcelona legend's style of play.
Dier's rate of creativity has deteriorated as his career has progressed while his average passing accuracy has become more polished, emphasising the shift in focus that has come with a positional change. Notably, he completed just 79% of his passes during that debut term in Spurs colours. Now, he's averaging a pass success rate of 91%. Not bad.
However, the fact that Dier no longer performs in that erstwhile anchorman role speaks of a positional incongruity, with pundit Martin Keown even remarking that the Three Lions star was "playing in the wrong position."
Busquets, on the other hand, is one of the finest, most influential defensive midfielders in history. Aptly, Vicente del Bosque famously said: "You watch the game, you don't see Busquets. You watch Busquets, you see the whole game."
Bathing in an illustrious career with Barcelona that saw him chalk up 722 appearances, win nine La Liga titles and clinch three Champions League trophies – also winning the 2010 World Cup with Spain – Busquets is undoubtedly one of the greats.
His seamless ability to control the midfield and pick out passages that his legendary forward teammates would feast upon, always three steps ahead, was masterful, boasting a ridiculous career pass success rate of 90.7%, averaging 2.5 tackles and 0.7 key passes per game to underscore his immense calibre at the beating heart of the field.
Why Eric Dier was sold by Spurs
Dier enjoyed a relatively prominent role at Tottenham over the years but it ended in misery and the newfound fluency in defence suggests that it might have been worth shipping him on years back, with his performances last season contributing centrally to Tottenham's demise.
As per Sofascore, Dier completed 33 Premier League fixtures last season and started 31 times, and while he completed 86% of his passes and impressed in the air, winning 70% of his aerial battles, he was slow and ineffective as his side shipped an ignominious 63 goals throughout the campaign – the sixth-worst tally in the division.
Such performances proved damning, with Tottenham struggling quite significantly and pundit Jamie O'Hara singling out the player as he toiled and sank further into mediocrity during the 2022/23 campaign.
O'Hara said: "I don't think he should be starting for Tottenham. His time is up at Tottenham, if I am honest. I don't think he's good enough to play for Tottenham.
"He has been at the club a long time and he has been a loyal servant. But he just isn't good enough. Tottenham needs to move on. This is the future now."
And if he thought he might earn a fresh shot under Postecoglou this season he was gravely mistaken, completely ostracised from the starting line-up and even missing out on the squad as Tottenham lost against Fulham in the Carabao Cup back in August, only called into play following the loss of both Van de Ven and Romero in November.
His sole Premier League start of the season arrived against Wolverhampton Wanderers, and after falling flat in the late stage as the hosts completed a stunning turnaround victory, he would not play from the outset again.
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Dier had also been described as a “liability” by writer Mitch Fretton, making it quite clear that he was not going to be entrusted with an important role in Postecoglou's system, especially given his lack of mobility and progression, ranking among only the top 40% of centre-backs across Europe's top five leagues over the past year for pass completion and the top 50% for progressive passes per 90, as per FBref.
With Van de Ven utterly immense in his athletic performances and partnership with Romero, it's hardly looking like Dier is a missed figure at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
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ByAngus Sinclair Mar 28, 2024
Once considered in the same breath as Busquets as the anchor of Tottenham's midfield, Dier shifted into defence and then into the shadows of the fringe.
He may well revive his career in Germany, but he simply didn't offer enough at Spurs for too long.