30-year-old Serge Aurier is having something of an Indian summer this term with the former Tottenham defender excelling at Nottingham Forest.
The Ivory Coast international left English football in 2021 but returned last year as one of Forest’s many new signings after promotion to the Premier League.
Since his arrival, they have only lost four times in the top flight from the 15 games he’s featured in, with Steve Cooper’s side transforming themselves from relegation-battlers to a team comfortably in mid-table.
It has been some turnaround with Aurier – their best outfield player this season (via Sofascore’s ratings) – enjoying some of the best form of his career.
He has been at the epicentre of their revival and deserves plenty of praise. However, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for the full-back in English football. In fact, his time with Spurs turned out to be a financial disaster.
How much did Aurier cost Spurs?
The Ivorian joined the Lilywhites in the summer of 2017 for a fee of £23m. That isn’t an astronomical price to pay, particularly for a player who had been at PSG.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be poor business with the defender ultimately flopping in north London.
Aurier initially arrived with good pedigree, having featured on 81 occasions for the Parisian outfit, a club where he won 12 trophies.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t win a title while at White Hart Lane and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with that winning habit quickly being nipped in the bud.
It was hoped that a player with such experience could be at the forefront of a Spurs team that would eventually go on to reach a Champions League final, but there was no such luck for a man who was often the villain of the piece.
Why did Aurier leave Spurs?
To put it simply, he was error-stricken and his exit from Tottenham in 2021 was nothing shocking.
After that initial £23m outlay, his contract was terminated and off he ran into the sunset, eventually joining Villarreal in Spain.
All too often, the defender was the one who made a mistake, so much so that pundit Jamie Carragher remarked that he was “one of the biggest liabilities in Premier League football.”
It was a particularly harsh claim, one the former Liverpool centre-back ended by saying: “[He] is a player who would possibly put you off management with the amount of crazy decisions he makes.”
That came in light of a foul on Raheem Sterling in the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City, with the Ivorian’s reckless challenge leading to a goal that proved to be crucial in a 1-0 defeat.
He had an appalling habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, giving away four penalties in a season and a half of football between 2019 and 2020. That was the second-worst record in that time frame, only behind David Luiz on five.
That unwanted record came about after a moment of “utter madness” – in the words of Roy Keane – saw him penalised for a shove on Wesley Fofana versus Leicester.
Having also given away penalties against Liverpool in 2019 and Brighton in April 2018 he was evidently a clumsy individual, one who no doubt Daniel Levy will be wishing he never brought to the capital.
Aurier has since cleaned up his act during a spell at Forest, but the fear of another penalty can never be too far away. For that reason, it was just as well Spurs got rid, even if the move turned out to be a financial disaster.
