If you want the perfect example of just how poor Tottenham are at selling players, take a look at the team that took to the field for the club in the 2019 Champions League final.
Just over four years ago, Mauricio Pochettino put out a Spurs team in Madrid to face Liverpool that featured Hugo Lloris in goal, a defence of Danny Rose, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld and Kieran Trippier, a midfield duo of Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko, with Son Heung-min, Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen sitting behind Harry Kane.
It was a team that competed in a historic first ever Champions League final for the club, yet before Harry Winks' £10million move to Leicester City this week it was a group of players that Spurs chairman Daniel Levy was only able to get roughly less than £45million for and most of that came from the £17million and £20million moves of Christian Eriksen and Kieran Trippier respectively, the Dane in the final six months of his contract.
Of that side, Rose, Vertonghen and Alli left for nothing, the latter with potential add-ons. Alderweireld and Sissoko left for nominal amounts with Lloris expected to do similar this summer.
Only Kane and Son remain from that starting line-up. Spurs maintain they have no intention of selling either, although there remains the possibility that Kane could depart next summer on a free transfer if they stick to that stance.
It's not just the starting XI either. If you scan through the bench from that day on June 1, 2019, there are far more lost sales. Serge Aurier, Victor Wanyama, Lucas Moura, Fernando Llorente, Michel Vorm and Paulo Gazzaniga all left for nothing. Erik Lamela was used in a swap deal for Bryan Gil, who is yet to find regular football at Spurs.
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Spurs brought in some money for young players Juan Foyth and Kyle Walker-Peters, the latter going the other way to Southampton for Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, who has been linked with a move this summer.
The remaining three, Davinson Sanchez, Eric Dier and Ben Davies, are all still at the club, although Sanchez in particular is expected to leave this summer.
If you want to add another name to the list you could include one of the best midfielders the club has had in the modern era in Mousa Dembele, who left for just £11million that January for the Chinese Super League, again because his contract was set to expire.
It goes to show that if that's all Tottenham could get for one of their best teams in recent years, they stood no chance of getting decent money back for the expensive flops they have thrown money at.
While football fans of clubs across the world all call for exciting, big-fee transfers, it's difficult to find a reason for that when it comes to Spurs.
Their record transfers over recent years have been Moussa Sissoko, Davinson Sanchez, Tanguy Ndombele - with Giovani Lo Celso running him close with his loan fee plus eventual fee rolled together - and then Richarlison last summer.
Sissoko was seen as a disaster before a couple of good years, that 2018/19 season the highlight. Sanchez had a fine first season but has been unable to replicate it since. Ndombele and Lo Celso have been sent out on multiple loans after failing to convince and even £60million attacker Richarlison has scored just one Premier League goal for Tottenham.
So with some Spurs fans turning their nose up at the expected free signing of Manor Solomon this week it's worth noting that most of the club's eventual stars have cost them relatively little. Rodrigo Bentancur is the most recent example of that rule with his £15million arrival from Juventus 18 months ago.
While those cheaper stars, or in Kane's case academy products, show that Spurs are better at occasionally finding rough gems, it's the club's inability to choose where to splash their cash that is the most troubling and their inability to then sell those soon unwanted players.
Spurs have spent hundreds of millions of pounds across the past five years but have precious little to show for it. Add on top of that the costs of sacking manager after manager during that period and it's even more of a mess.
"If you look at the amount of money Tottenham has spent on new players over the last five or 10 years and you compare it with certain other clubs in the Premier League, not only have we exceeded those clubs but actually some of those clubs may well have been more successful than us on the pitch," Levy said in a Q&A with the Cambridge Union in March.
"There is not necessarily a direct link between the amount of money you spend and getting success on the pitch. Invariably it is what you spend it on and I could name, I won't name, but we could all name in here a number of players Tottenham has bought that have not been successful and we've lost an awful lot of money."
Some might argue that had Spurs gone the extra mile on the even better, more ready made players then their investment would have paid off handsomely, but it's clear they've been burned with the burden of unwanted players who nobody else particularly wants.
When managing director of football Fabio Paratici arrived from Italy 2021 he arrived with a reputation for brokering transfers around the world but also one of struggling to offload players at Juventus.
He did little to disprove that suggestion during his time as a full-time employee for Spurs, the nadir being the ripping up of a surprised Matt Doherty's contract as the club realised they had too many players out on international loans as he was about to move to Atletico Madrid than the rules allowed. football.london revealed last month that Paratici remains involved with Tottenham on a consultancy basis.
The constant chopping and changing of managers with very different systems also creates a higher turnover of players and Spurs need to get some out of the door this summer as their inability to do so often hinders them.
For example, in both of the previous two summer transfer windows the plan has been to bring in two new centre-backs, yet Tottenham's inability to move others on has thwarted that.
Again this summer the aim is to bring in two central defenders but they need to move others out to create the space. Spurs have a strong interest in Wolfsberg's Micky van de Ven, Bayer Leverkusen's Edmond Tapsoba and Fulham defender Tosin Adarabioyo, with Clement Lenglet still also an option.
For Levy, the dilemma remains between holding out for higher transfer fees that history suggests rarely come or just bite the bullet and accept what bids arrive in order to push on quickly with the rebuild for Ange Postecoglou, albeit without the added cushion of extra funds.
The answer to it all is simply better recruitment in the first place and with a renewed emphasis on data analysis this summer that could happen this time around, despite the absence of a full-time director of football.
Ultimately Levy is the one who signs off on all of it and he will continue to be judged for Spurs' success in the transfer market and on the pitch regardless of those in between him and that grass, including his new chief football officer Scott Munn, who officially became his new number two on Saturday.
The key this summer to any success is building a squad that Postecoglou can flourish with rather than one the Australian simply has to wrangle and make do with.
