Three Tottenham Players Ask to Leave as De Zerbi’s Rebuild Unravels

Roberto De Zerbi has confirmed that three of his Tottenham players have asked to leave the club before Tuesday’s transfer deadline, as a chaotic summer at the bottom of the Premier League threatens to end with as much turnover off the pitch as on it. Richarlison, Kevin Danso and Pape Matar Sarr have all been left out of matchday squads in recent weeks, and De Zerbi says all three have told him directly they want to go.

“Richarlison, I don’t know. He said too many times he wants to leave,” De Zerbi said. “Danso came to me two days ago and he said wants to leave and Pape Sarr the same, but he suffered a small injury, but he is almost ready to train.”

The Tottenham head coach did not sound like a man fighting to keep any of them. “I have very good relationships but if they want to leave, they have to bring the solution, the economic solution, to the club, and they can go,” he said.

A Striker Swap With Everton

Richarlison’s situation is the most advanced of the three. Everton have agreed terms in principle to re-sign the Brazil international, four years after selling him to Tottenham, as part of a move that would see Iliman Ndiaye head in the opposite direction. Spurs are in advanced talks for Ndiaye, though it remains unclear whether the 26-year-old will actually complete a switch to north London, with Manchester City also showing interest.

Everton are open to selling Ndiaye after he turned down several contract offers this summer and held separate talks with Saudi club Al-Hilal. Richarlison, meanwhile, enters the final year of his Tottenham contract and would provide competition for first-choice striker Thierno Barry at Everton, with the futures of both Beto and Ndiaye at Goodison Park still to be resolved.

Richarlison was Tottenham’s top scorer last season with 11 goals and played a key role in a Premier League survival battle that went to the final day. Earlier in August, De Zerbi had described him as difficult to replace, saying “it’s not easy to find another striker like Richarlison.” That reluctance appears to have faded fast. Manchester City loanee Omar Marmoush arrived last week and immediately replaced Richarlison in De Zerbi’s starting eleven for Saturday’s home defeat to Newcastle.

Danso and Sarr Squeezed Out

Danso’s path back into De Zerbi’s side has narrowed considerably after the arrivals of Marcos Senesi and Jan Paul van Hecke, both signed to compete in central defence. Micky van de Ven’s place looks the most secure of the back four after he signed a new contract and was handed the captaincy. Sunderland made an offer to take Danso on a season-long loan, but Tottenham turned it down, suggesting the club would rather sell outright than lose the Austria international’s value on a temporary deal.

Sarr’s situation is different again. The Senegal international has seen his midfield opportunities squeezed by the early-window arrivals of Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali, part of a spending spree in which Tottenham broke their club-record transfer fee twice inside a single week. Several Premier League clubs have shown interest in the 23-year-old, along with Turkish side Besiktas, but Juventus are understood to be the frontrunners for a loan deal that includes a conditional obligation to buy.

A Chain Reaction Across Merseyside

The Richarlison and Ndiaye moves are only part of a wider chain of deals connecting Tottenham’s business to Everton’s own deadline-day plans. Everton are growing increasingly confident of bringing Jack Grealish back on loan from Manchester City, but the precise terms remain complicated with the England international entering the final year of his contract at the Etihad Stadium. Grealish has reportedly prioritised a return to Merseyside, where he spent last season on loan, over the option of rejoining boyhood club Aston Villa, who have also expressed interest.

Everton are also close to agreeing a £9m deal for Fulham right-back Kenny Tete, who came close to joining the club last summer before opting to stay in west London. Fulham, in turn, have entered talks to sign Rayo Vallecano’s Andrei Ratiu as a replacement, illustrating how a single deadline-day deal in north London can ripple outward across three or four other clubs before the window closes on Tuesday.

Two Club Records Broken in a Week

Fernandes and Tonali arrived early in the transfer window as the two central pillars of De Zerbi’s midfield rebuild, and their fees illustrate how aggressively Tottenham chased that project. The club broke its own record transfer fee twice within the space of a single week to land the pair, a level of spending that made clear this was intended to be a squad built to compete rather than simply refreshed. Tonali’s arrival alone was reported to be worth up to £100m, a fee that made his laboured display in Saturday’s home defeat to his former club, Newcastle, all the more uncomfortable for a Tottenham support already frustrated by the team’s start to the season.

A £300m Rebuild, Bottom of the Table

The scale of the unrest sits awkwardly alongside Tottenham’s summer spending. De Zerbi’s side have spent more than £300m this summer in an attempt to close the gap on the Premier League’s leading clubs, after back-to-back 17th-place finishes under the previous regime. Instead, Spurs have lost their opening two league matches, away at Brentford and at home to Newcastle, and are yet to score a Premier League goal this season.

Eight first-team players have arrived at the club this summer as De Zerbi looks to remake the squad in his own image, but the exit requests from Richarlison, Danso and Sarr point to a dressing room where not everyone has bought into that project. Whether Tottenham can turn incoming money from those departures into further reinforcements before Tuesday’s deadline, or whether the club simply ends the window with a smaller and more disgruntled group than it started with, will say a great deal about how De Zerbi’s first season in charge is likely to unfold.

For a manager who arrived promising a clear attacking identity, the immediate reality is messier than that. Three unsettled first-team players, a striker swap dependent on Everton’s own business, and a winless, goalless start to the league season all point to a rebuild that is, for now, unfolding in public and in real time.

Squad Numbers Still to Balance

Whichever of Danso, Sarr and Richarlison actually leave before Tuesday’s deadline, De Zerbi will still need to manage a squad that has grown significantly heavier at the top end this summer. Tonali and Fernandes arrived to strengthen midfield options that already included Sarr, while Senesi and van Hecke were added to a defence that already had Danso and van de Ven competing for starting spots. Marmoush’s arrival on loan from Manchester City gives De Zerbi another senior forward option even before any incoming deal for Ndiaye is completed.

That depth was presumably the intention behind Tottenham’s £300m outlay, building a squad capable of competing on multiple fronts after two seasons finishing 17th. Instead, it has produced a group where several first-team players, all with genuine claims to a starting shirt twelve months ago, no longer see a future in north London. Untangling that mismatch between spending and squad harmony, while still fielding a competitive team against Tottenham’s next opponents, is the immediate test facing De Zerbi as his first transfer window in charge reaches its final hours.

None of this was the outlook promised when De Zerbi arrived at Tottenham vowing an attacking, possession-based identity built around a settled core group. Instead, his opening weeks in the Premier League have been dominated by exit requests, a striker swap dependent on another club’s business, and a squad still being reshaped in real time on deadline day itself. Whether Tottenham can turn Tuesday’s deadline into the moment the rebuild finally settles, or simply into another chapter of a chaotic opening month, will only become clear once the dust from this window has cleared.

What is already clear is that De Zerbi’s honesty about the situation, naming Richarlison, Danso and Sarr publicly rather than deflecting questions about their futures, marks a different approach to squad management than Tottenham fans have grown used to in recent years. Whether that transparency helps steady a dressing room going through significant upheaval, or simply confirms to unsettled players that the door is open, is likely to be judged on results rather than words over the coming weeks. Tottenham’s next Premier League fixture, away at Nottingham Forest on 5 September, will offer an early sign of whether a settled starting eleven can be found from a squad still in flux. By then, Tuesday’s deadline will have passed and De Zerbi will know exactly which of his unsettled players remain his responsibility to manage, and which have finally been allowed to leave for the clubs they publicly asked to join, closing a window that has said as much about Tottenham’s dressing room as it has about their transfer strategy.