The winter transfer window closed this week with a whimper. Not much happened at Spurs but then not much happened full stop – pity the poor Sky Sports News’ presenters.

Predictably the two biggest signings were made by the league’s richest clubs, Cuadrado moving to Stamford Bridge on deadline day, after City had signed Bony earlier in January.

Which brings me to my pet hate – City and Chelsea’s habit of hoovering up all the best players. It’s bad enough that they can out-bid any Premier League club, bar Manchester United, but it’s the stockpiling of attacking talent that really irks me.

When they end up with too many players and have to move some on, they make sure the good ones end up far away from their rivals. Pochettino could probably do with a Negredo, a Salah or a Schurrle.

Anyway, back to Spurs.

While logically I know Tottenham’ problems won’t be solved by a flashy new signing, deep down I’m a sucker for a big transfer deal. I still remember the excitement when Rafael van der Vaart signed late on deadline day or that crazy month two summers ago when every morning seemed to bring a shiny new recruit.

Before the window opened, I identified four areas we could do with strengthening and, with third and fourth place looking up for grabs this year, part of me does does feel like it’s an opportunity missed.

Of course, new scouting supremo, Paul Mitchell, has only been in the job a couple of months and, realistically, it will be easier to identify targets and bring on board new players in the summer. With a squad bloated by managerial turnover, Tottenham’s focus was always likely to be on who we could get rid of.

Naughton was a half decent backup right back but was never quite good enough. £5 million was good business.

From a sentimental point of view, I was quite sad to see Lennon go out on loan but he has been treading water for a while now and clearly wasn’t in Pochettino’s plans.

The biggest disappointment was our failure to offload some of the more troublesome members of the squad. It can’t help to have Kaboul – still nominally club captain – hanging around on the sidelines. Equally, it’s painful to see Adebayor’s eye-watering salary wasted when that money could be more usefully spent in the summer.

Wages always seem to be neglected when the media reports on transfer news. Adebayor cost a mere £9 Million but four years of his wages is closer to £20 Million. That’s why trying to loan out some of our misfits makes sense. It saves money, puts them in the shop window and stops them from moping around White Hart Lane.

Obviously selling them would be preferable but there don’t seem to be many takers.

Even our two new arrivals weren’t really new arrivals. Yedlin was already signed-up back in the summer, although he can now be integrated properly into the squad. This will probably be with a view to next season and beyond; I doubt we’ll see him make much of an impact on the first team in the first few months.

No sooner had MK Dons prodigy Dele Alli put pen to paper than he was back at Stadium mk on loan. He sounds an exciting prospect, although I can’t pretend to watch a lot of League One football. Reports suggest he’s a box-to-box midfielder in the mould of Steven Gerrard.

As a side note, it does pain me that we gave £5 Million to a club I consider to represent everything that’s wrong with football.

Overall it does leave us rather lacking in cover. Pochettino already didn’t seem to trust several members of the squad, touting them around probably hasn’t helped their relationship. We’ll just have to pray everyone stays healthy – imagine if Kane got injured!

One last piece of business to mention – finally Tottenham parted company with Benoit Assou-Ekotto, 624 days and £5 Million in wages since he last played for us.

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What did you make of Spurs transfer window? Who would you target in the summer? Should we have let Aaron Lennon go? Let me know your opinions in the comments below.