Rose believes Ross Barkley is the big splash Spurs need to make

Danny Rose’s interview in The Sun has been making its rounds for a few hours now. While we’ve read through it a few times and come up with our initial thoughts and interpretations, lost in the interview a bit is that Rose obviously sees Ross Barkley as a major splash that Tottenham Hotspur need to make in order to improve themselves.

Rose’s interview with The Sun is broken up into a couple of parts, so let’s focus on this part. I’ll post all of the relevant quotes necessary here so you don’t have to click onto the site, but if you feel compelled to read the entire thing, it’s right here.

The England left-back has singled out unsettled Everton ace Ross Barkley as one of the two or three top-class stars he believes Spurs should recruit.

As the blunt-speaking Yorkshireman put it: “I am not saying buy ten players, I’d love to see two or three — and not players you have to Google and say, ‘Who’s that?’ I mean well-known players.”

Rose isn’t wrong here. We’ve seen what happens when a huge number of players come into a club all at once back in 2013 when Gareth Bale was sold to Real Madrid for a world record fee. We can all agree that Christian Eriksen came good from that and Erik Lamela, when he’s been healthy, a fine player. That especially rings true in the 2015-16 campaign. Nacer Chadli had plenty of good moments, but had a lot of anonymous matches. After that, it’s kind of a mess: Roberto Soldado was a bust. Etienne Capoue had some flashes but apparently wasn’t great in the dressing room. Vlad Chiriches played like a crazy person. Paulinho was good very early on, but was soon lost and was sold to China.

It isn’t just Spurs that have dealt with this problem. Ask any Liverpool fan how their season went after they sold Luis Suarez to Barcelona. Same song, different verse. I’d be willing to bet Everton find out first hand this upcoming season as well.

Rose is saying what we’re all thinking: This club has challenged for the league title the last two years and the complacency to improve is frustrating.

Rose also urged Spurs to sign two or three big players this summer – starting with Ross Barkley.

This part is taken from another part of the interview, found here. Rose clearly rates Barkley as they’ve both played for England on the international level and have played against each other for a few seasons now in the Premier League. We’ve all discussed at great length about the fee that Everton are demanding and how it’s come down in the recent days. Daniel Levy is more than likely waiting things out to try and drive the price down, but at the same time this causes an issue where a new player cannot integrate with the squad until after the season has started. Barkely may very well be fit if he’s training with Everton, but a new signing needs to learn the new tactics, the new training regimen, and ease into the side with new teammates.

Look, this is the secondary part that we all care about with this interview, but this story isn’t going away and is probably in overdrive now. If Rose thinks that Barkley is a marquee signing, one has to wonder what his teammates think about him as well. Rose speaking out may or may not have any impact on how Spurs conduct their business in the final three weeks of the window, but we know for a fact now that at least one Spurs player rates the Everton midfielder.