DONE DEAL: Harry Winks completes season-long loan to Sampdoria

Gotta say this is one move that I wondered if it would ever happen. But it has — today, Tottenham Hotspur announced that homegrown midfielder and academy graduate Harry Winks has left the club on loan to Serie A side Sampdoria for the season.

There are few players who have been as divisive over the past decade or so than Harry Winks. Moussa Sissoko. Nabil Bentaleb. Tanguy Ndombele, certainly. Maaaaaybe Ryan Mason and Nacer Chadli? Say what you will about Harry Winks but he’s been great for driving content #onhere.

But it’s been clear for more than a year that he was falling out of Tottenham’s plans, and that even predates Antonio Conte. He’s not a bad player — he’s clearly a Premier League footballer, though has limitations to his game that mean he can’t exactly plug into any side and fit like a puzzle piece. That’s probably what led to what appears now to be the end of his Tottenham career.

The Sampdoria loan is supposedly a straight loan with no purchase option or obligation, which means he’ll be returning to Spurs next summer and we get to do this all over again. Maybe he’ll return from Italy having learned how to ping balls from deep, making him basically English Pirlo. Or maybe Sampdoria will fall in love with his sideways passing ability so much they’ll offer Spurs £40m to keep him around for next year’s Scudetto push. Who can say?

Edit: but wait: There are reports now out of Sampdoria that seem to imply that there might be a purchase option there as well!

At the very least, Winks is heading to a club where if he works hard he will get more first team minutes than he’d otherwise get in North London. Honestly, good for him. I wish him well. I’d like nothing better than for him to prove me wrong.

Good luck in Genoa, Harry. Play molto bene.