£185m and a ‘disaster signing’ two weeks ago: has Tottenham’s expensive new midfield finally justified the fee?

Tottenham spent about £185m on two midfielders inside a week in July, and for the first two months of the season plenty of people outside N17 thought they had been taken for a ride.

Three straight wins later, that argument sounds very different. Tottenham beat 10-man Crystal Palace 2-0 on Saturday, a week after winning 2-0 at Chelsea, and they are now eighth on 12 points. A fortnight ago they were bottom.

At the middle of it are Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes, the double pivot Spurs spent their summer on. On the last few weeks alone, we’d put Tonali in a very short conversation about the best midfielder in the Premier League, with Declan Rice the obvious rival.

So does that mean the fees were right? Not quite yet, but the case against them has got a lot weaker.

How much did Tottenham actually pay for Tonali and Fernandes?

Fernandes went first, at a club-record £85m, and Tonali took the record off him four days later. Newcastle received a reported initial £92.5m for the Italian, rising to £100m.

Those are big numbers for a club that finished 17th last season. Fernandes had only joined West Ham from Southampton for an initial £38m a year earlier, and West Ham were already lining up his replacement in June. Tonali’s reported £275,000 a week puts him on serious money too. You don’t get much patience on that sort of outlay, and neither of them got any.

Was Tonali’s slow start really about fitness?

It looks that way now. After the 3-0 opening-day defeat at Brentford, Roberto De Zerbi named Tonali among the players who weren’t in their best physical condition. It sounded like an excuse at the time, and the early performances did little to change that.

What we’re watching now is a different animal. Tonali’s ball recoveries have become the best thing about this Spurs side. He covers ground at a ridiculous rate, turns up just when a move looks like it is getting away from them, and is still running in the 90th minute the way he was in the first.

De Zerbi said as much after Palace. “Tonali today was unbelievable, incredible,” he said. “We played with two players more. Tonali was the double today.”

What makes Mateus Fernandes so different from the man written off in October?

Nothing, if you ask his manager. “Two weeks ago, Mateus Fernandes, 80 million, was a disaster signing, a disaster player, not good enough,” De Zerbi said on Friday, before adding that he was “the same player after Chelsea” as before it.

That’s a touch generous, because he has clearly grown into this. His delivery has real whip and pace, and the deep ball for Jan Paul van Hecke’s goal on 73 minutes was the sort Christian Eriksen used to hit from the other side. It was his corner that Mike Penders punched into his own net at Stamford Bridge as well. Then there was the scooped pass for Omar Marmoush from the number 10 position against Palace, which only just got away from the striker.

The bit that matters most is that he isn’t a liability without the ball. He gets through a lot of defensive work in front of the back line, which frees Tonali to go hunting. That combination is what Spurs wanted when they wrote the cheques.

Why does this double pivot suit De Zerbi’s new Spurs?

Because Tottenham have calmed down. Early in the season they went at teams for half an hour, ran out of legs and were open to the counter. The last three games have been slower and far more patient, with players around the ball when it is lost so that the opponent has to rush it long.

The Palace numbers show how far that went: 758 accurate passes to 149, 79.4% of the ball, and 372 of 413 final-third passes completed. Palace’s 20.6% possession is the lowest they have recorded in the Premier League. It isn’t a million miles from the control Arsenal have built their game on, even if it wasn’t the prettiest night in N17.

De Zerbi has been clear that the contrast is deliberate. “To build a team, you have to bring different characteristics,” he said on Friday. Spurs fans have seen plenty of expensive midfield ideas fall flat, with Tanguy Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso the ones that still sting. This one is at least doing what it looked like on paper.

Have Tottenham just been lucky?

Partly, and it would be daft to pretend otherwise. Penders gifted them an opener at Chelsea, and Jean-Philippe Mateta was sent off after 13 minutes on Saturday for a studs-up challenge on Micky van de Ven. Take those moments away and the run looks less convincing.

The counter-argument is that Spurs have earned some of this. They had six league games without a win to start the season, and they created plenty in several of them. Against Palace they had 34 shots to two and 3.26 expected goals to 0.14, and even Luca Williams-Barnett’s five-minute debut ended with a chance that should have been a third.

De Zerbi isn’t getting carried away either. “Maybe now we are not ready yet to play against one low block,” he said, adding that “maybe in two, three months we can reach the right level.”

What happens when Bentancur and Bergvall are back?

This is the next test. Rodrigo Bentancur served the last game of his three-match ban against Palace, and Lucas Bergvall has been out with a knee problem. Conor Gallagher is in the mix as well, so De Zerbi is about to have far more midfielders than places.

We wouldn’t touch it. Tonali and Fernandes have earned a long run together, and the partnership has only just started to click. Rest either of them when the fixtures demand it, by all means, but this is the pair to build on.

Are Tonali and Fernandes worth £185m to Tottenham yet?

Not yet. Two big performances and one 10-man opponent don’t settle a bill that size, and we wouldn’t go as far as saying Spurs underpaid, tempting as it is on current form.

But the pair have already done the hardest thing, which is to make a heavily mocked summer look like it had a plan behind it. De Zerbi’s own warning is the right one to finish on: “The world is going too fast.” A fortnight ago it was going too fast against them. Keep this up until Christmas and £185m will look like the price of a midfield that Tottenham have needed for years.