Tottenham Hotspur will be desperate to return to the Champions League next season but truthfully the appointment of Ange Postecoglou is enough to spark optimism in north London for years to come.
Will Spurs secure top four? It's a big question at this stage. Are they in a better place than last season? Most certainly. Fourth in the Premier League after 24 matches, ahead of Aston Villa by just a point, Tottenham have put the malaise of the 2022/23 campaign behind them.
Postecoglou's ideology on the pitch captured the awe throughout the opening months of the term, and while a tough period throughout November and December snuffed out credible title aspirations, there are certainly some promising signs looking forward.
Fast-flowing, dominant football forms the nucleus of the Australian's tactical preference and it is something that has been "non-negotiable" – by his own admission – when setting his squad up.
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His work on the transfer front has been the buttressing to fuel the exciting new era, the likes of James Maddison and Micky van de Ven arriving and charging an outfit that had flopped to an eighth-placed finish last season.
The 58-year-old has shipped out much deadwood but he will be thankful he never had to deal with Serge Aurier, who departed one year earlier after a terrible time at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Spurs' signing of Serge Aurier
Over the years, there have been a range of missteps in the transfer market down the N17, and while the £63m purchase of Tanguy Ndombele and the previous club-record deal of Davinson Sanchez, for around £42m, these heavy-outlay blunders are not the only regretful buys to litter the club's path.
Joining from Paris Saint-Germain for £23m back in August 2017, Ivorian full-back Aurier, then aged 24, was lined up as the direct replacement to the outgoing Kyle Walker, who had been targetted by Pep Guardiola's Manchester City ahead of a £50m acquisition.
Trailed by a spate of issues and controversies, Aurier was at least a talented player on the pitch and had racked up 81 appearances for the French giants, scoring five goals and supplying 15 assists and winning a wealth of major honours – including two Ligue 1 titles.
At his best, when breaking through to the forefront of the European game, Aurier was blessed with eye-catching athleticism and an all-round skill set that underpin his suitability to a prominent role in the Premier League, and while he had his moments in Spurs white, they were few and far between, interspersed with too many moments of lost face.
Worse than Reguilon
Across his time at Tottenham, Aurier chalked up 110 outings, posting eight goals and 17 assists in all competitions, and while this return certainly isn't a poor output, he was chastised by the likes of pundit Jamie Carragher for his woeful performances.
The former Liverpool star said: "Aurier is maybe one of the biggest liabilities in Premier League football and is a player who would possibly put you off management with the amount of crazy decisions he makes.
"We know what happened with the goal, he ends up running off the pitch allowing Sterling – the worst thing you can do – on that right foot almost get the goal."
Definitely one of Tottenham's worst full-back signings in recent memory, Aurier was even worse than Sergio Reguilon, who completed a move that could rise to £32m from Real Madrid back in 2020.
The Spaniard, still on Tottenham's books (on loan at Brentford), has been called "average" and the "worst of the bunch" by pundit Jon Wenham but he still has age on his side – 27 years old – and has endured a tough time on the injury front to stifle his progress.
He's also been believed to be on a £53k-per-week salary during his time at Tottenham; Aurier, by comparison, was on a healthy wage of £78k-per-week when departing French football for England's capital.
Serge Aurier's post-Spurs career
Aurier's contract was never renewed and at the end of the 2020/21 season – one year before his deal concluded – a mutual termination allowed him to spend a year in Spain with Villarreal.
That didn't work out either and in 2022 Nottingham Forest offered the 31-year-old a Premier League lifeline, snapping him up on a free transfer after a landslide few years.
Date
Market Value
07/2017
£23m
07/2018
£15m
07/2019
£8m
07/2020
£11m
07/2021
£12m
07/2022
£4m
07/2023
£2m
01/2024
£4m
Source: Football Transfers
As the table shows, the 5 foot 9 flop never lived up to the potential when Spurs chairman Daniel Levy unloaded a relatively large sum on his services, since depreciating further and further to mirror an ineffectiveness on the pitch.
In the video above, Nottingham Forest rebounded from an opening-day defeat this season against Arsenal to sink newly-promoted Sheffield United.
It was Aurier's brilliant creativity that ensured the hosts picked up all three points, two delightful looping crosses for forward Taiwo Awoniyi and Chris Wood the decisive moments.
Such balls stem from the quality that Tottenham know has always been within Aurier's grasp, but his impetuous nature and startling lack of consistency stopped him from ever reaching his potential on English shores.
Once heckled for his "criminal" defensive awareness by former Spurs man Michael Dawson, Aurier's is one of many acquisitions that fell wide of the mark and the hope now is that a new era brings a new sheen of diligence and prosperity.
There's a long way to go, but it does appear that Levy has found the formula in Postecoglou to ensure that such wayward transfer ventures are avoided for good, Aurier used as the touchstone for dreadful deals worth veering clear of going forward.