£16.5m down the drain: Spurs' "explosive" £35k-p/w "problem" rinsed Levy for 155 weeks - opinion

Having joined Tottenham Hotspur in what was an £11m move back in August of 2016, hopes for Georges-Kevin N’Koudou would have undoubtedly been extremely high in north London.

Indeed, the then-21-year-old – who himself claimed was an “explosive” player – had just enjoyed an incredibly impressive season with Olympique Marseille, scoring five goals and registering three assists over 28 Ligue 1 fixtures, as well as bagging four goals and two assists over seven Europe League outings and one goal in one Coupe de la Ligue appearance.

As such, Daniel Levy’s signing of the then-France U21 international, as well as the chairman’s decision to hand the winger a five-year deal on a reported £35k-per-week, appeared to be an astute piece of business for Tottenham.

However, after failing to make any real impression within Mauricio Pochettino’s side during his debut season in north London – starting just two of his 17 appearances in all competitions – as well as featuring sparingly in the first half of the 2017/18 campaign – starting one of his six outings – N’Koudou was subsequently loaned out to Burnley that winter, where the attacker once again failed to impress over his eight appearances for the Clarets.

After returning to Spurs in the summer of 2018, the Frenchman once again spent the majority of his time on the touchline in 2018/19, making a mere three appearances for the club, before once again being shipped out on a temporary basis in the January transfer window – this time to AS Monaco, where the £4.23m-rated man would also feature just three times that season.

Then, in the summer of 2019, after making a grand total of just 27 appearances for Tottenham, the winger who Pochettino once dubbed a “problem” was finally cut loose, with