Looking at the bigger picture, Spurs can reflect over their Luka Modric experience with some satisfaction after the midfielder's move to Real Madrid, having had the Croat for four years and sold him abroad. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Action Images
The way in which Tottenham Hotspur crafted their notice about the impending sale of Luka Modric was intriguing to say the least. "The club can announce that it has signed a partnership agreement with Real Madrid FC and reached agreement for the transfer of Luka Modric," reads the message on the official website. Can it have possibly been an accident that the first clause references the supposedly senior angle about the new working relationship and the player sale trails in afterwards?
Nobody can blame Tottenham for trying to sugarcoat the news that their most refined performer is leaving. It is hard to be positive about losing a valued player with plenty of peak years ahead of him. But looking at the bigger picture, Spurs can reflect over their Modric experience with some satisfaction. They enjoyed four years of service from the Croat, doubled their money when it came to his departure, and avoided the humiliation of selling to a direct rival. Daniel Levy's comment about being pleased that the deal was struck with Real does not require much reading between the lines to emphasise how pleasing it is that it was not somebody rather closer to home.
A year ago there was a very pointed intervention from on high to ensure that Modric did not waltz off to Stamford Bridge. As it turns out, it is perfectly possible that Chelsea may not have felt the need to recruit Eden Hazard if they had been successful with last summer's big bid for Modric. So perhaps everybody's happy enough with the outcome. Well, not quite. Not yet, anyway. Tottenham's happiness regarding the Modric sale will only be measurable come Friday night. The critical issue is plain enough: how much of their current transfer surplus will be spent, and on whom?
Once the Modric deals is completed, from this transfer window so far Spurs are more than £40m in credit, with the sales of Vedrun Corluka, Niko Kranjcar and Steven Pienaar adding to the pot. That figure may well grow if they can move on some of the faces that do not fit for André Villas-Boas.
The club are quietly confident that they can pull off some substantial surprises over the coming days, some names to turn heads, and lift the spirits. They hope to make a statement beyond the arrivals of Gylfi Sigurdsson, Jan Vertonghen and Emmanuel Adebayor. But when all the business is finally done, White Hart Lane regulars will be keen to see the balance sheet at the end of the transfer window. Recent seasons demonstrate a steady decline in net spend.
When Modric joined the club in 2008 for a shade over £16m, he represented the biggest deal of an extremely busy summer. Fellow new arrivals, who took the total outlay to around £50m, were Alan Hutton, Jonathan Woodgate, Heurelho Gomes, Giovani dos Santos, Gilberto and Chris Gunter. Although they turned out to offer notably less value than Modric, Spurs did at least put the money on the table and, when the sales were taken into account, they had paid out over £35m on transfers.
The following season that figure dropped to around £14m. They spent heavily again, but were able to offset £50m gained through the sales of Dimitar Berbatov and Robbie Keane. The transfer spend dropped again over the next two seasons, to roughly £7m. Then, last summer, they turned a profit, making far more from the sales than they ploughed into the buys for the first time in several seasons. Their sensible housekeeping looked impressive during an excellent start to the campaign but there was understandable frustration as results started to go awry and the squad looked tired during what turned out to be a complicated finale.
Will Tottenham give Villas-Boas the funds to make some fundamental additions to the squad? Will all the £40m-plus be ploughed back into the team or will there be another tidy profit to report? Are the board willing even to take a transfer loss by the end of the week by spending more than what remains from their summer sales?
With the ongoing issue of a new stadium and a limited-capacity White Hart Lane, a message of intent would be invaluable. Tottenham were holding out for more money from the Modric sale and they are certainly leaving it late for rushing through new signings, so the circumstances are not ideal.
In the meantime, amid the speculation about who may be en route to N17, there is this "partnership agreement" with Real to chew on. It remains to be seen how that will manifest itself into real tangible benefit. Real have a selection of arrangements with clubs worldwide, which more often than not concern marketing, friendlies, and an emphasis on youth development.
Spurs may be enticed by the idea of getting first dibs on anyone deemed surplus to requirements at the Bernabéu, but if that were the case, if there really was a technical rapport being plotted as the two clubs negotiated over recent days and weeks, it would have made sense for Nuri Sahin's loan destination to have been White Hart Lane. That way, the clubs continue to work closely on the midfielder's development and, in the absence of Modric, Sahin would have been able to bring some classy passing and vision to the Spurs midfield.
The only way for Levy to combat the scepticism is to be audacious and ambitious between now and those ticking-down minutes late on Friday night.
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