The Enigma that is Gio Dos Santos

Numerous reports this morning claim that Giovani Dos Santos has attracted the interest of Swansea City. With Swansea splashing out on Gylfi Sigurdsson to the tune of £6.5 million, it looks more likely that any agreement will initially be for a loan of the player.


When Gio joined, he came with a reputation of having fantastic trickery and bags of potential (He came through the Barcelona Academy!). However it was also well known that he was a regular attendee on the nightclub scene and lacked the motivation to train at 100% consistently.

His first pre-season showed much promise and he looked like he'd fit straight into the team, but the sacking of Juande Ramos, replaced by Harry, seemed to stunt his development, reducing him to playing the cup games only alongside the other second choice players.

Loan spells at Ipswich, Galatasaray and Racing Santander followed, where he impressed managers and pundits, leading to Udinese tabling a £14 million bid for him, but Gio decided he'd rather hold out for his preferred move back to Spain. Now back at Spurs he featured in the squad fairly regularly towards the end of the season, but the limited substitute appearances he made seemed to justify Harry's decision to leave the Mexican out.

The main problem for me regarding Dos Santos is that he simply doesn't fit our formation. The way Spurs play favours the 4-5-1 formation with the personnel to switch to 4-4-2 should we feel it necessary. These formations do not utilise a supporting striker or wing forward, the two main positions that Gio can play.

Some have called for him to be given a chance out on the wing when Lennon or Bale have been injured, but one of the duties of a winger is to get back and support the full back when the opposition are attacking. Gio's workrate has never convinced me, or Harry clearly, that he would be ale to carry out his defensive work. Another attribute lacking for Dos Santos is in his crossing abilities. A winger needs to have at least a fairly decent cross in him to succeed at a top club and Gio's is poor to be frank.

He's showed signs of quality at times, and that is why managers still show an interest in bringing him to their clubs but realistically there is no future for him at Spurs. It's time for Dos Santos to move on for his sake and the clubs, but preferably on a permanent transfer rather than a loan so that we can use the money to improve our squad.

Come August I expect us to have waved goodbye to our enigma.

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