Alan Shearer admits he got it wrong on Tottenham in damning U-turn on transfers

· Mirror

Alan Shearer had tipped Tottenham for a top six finish but already concedes that is looking way off with the north Londoners sat bottom of the Premier League

Alan Shearer admits his initial top six prediction for Tottenham is likely to be way off with Roberto De Zerbi's side sat bottom of the table after five games, as he accused the club of overpaying for players.

Tottenham remain winless and only scored their first Premier League goals this term late in the 3-2 loss to Aston Villa at the weekend as boos rang out in north London once again. And it is already threatening to be another season of struggle after successive 17th place finishes for the club, and their huge summer outlay has done nothing to change their fortunes as of yet.

Tottenham's recent spend, which exceeded £300million, had led to a sense of excitement. De Zerbi, off the back of keeping the club in the top flight, was backed with the signings of Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali, both for club-record fees. Jan Paul van Hecke signed from Brighton and Savio and Omar Marmoush were bought in from Manchester City.

And still the team have looked incredibly poor, amassing two points from five games, and Shearer has completed change his tune on his pre-season prediction that Tottenham would land a European spot.

He told Betfair: "I guess De Zerbi went into this summer with a list of players that he wanted and they have spent a fortune perhaps on all those players. I'm not sure the fees warrant the ability, but no one would have expected them to be bottom of the league."

On their transfer business Shearer claimed: "I've said many times, that they brought the players in this summer, but they spent an absolute fortune on them. On everyone, I think.

"Van Hecke was a lot of money, Tonali was incredible money, Savio, and Marmoush (on loan) are others as well. It is a long, long three weeks for Tottenham and they simply have to start winning football games when they are back from the international break.

Despite their lowly league position, Shearer still can't see Tottenham being involved in another relegation scrap.

"I still think they'll have enough to stay up," he said. "They'll use the Aston Villa situation and what happened to them at the start of last season when I don't think they won in their first five games and they then managed to climb the league and qualify for Europe again.

"They will look at that and think there's still loads of football to be played, which there is, but there's a massive amount of work to be done at Spurs. I had them to finish in the top six this season and I am not sure that that will happen now."

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