Tottenham Pay £75m for a Winger Manchester City Had Stopped Picking

A £75m fee is normally a statement of ambition. Tottenham's deal for Savio reads more like a wager: a club spending big on a player whose own manager had, by his shrinking role, already stopped picking him regularly. The Brazil international, 22, leaves Manchester City for Tottenham in a switch worth an initial £75m, with a further £10m potentially payable in add-ons. He has also reverted to his real name along the way - Savinho, the nickname he wore for two seasons at the Etihad, is retired, and Savio Moreira de Oliveira will play under the name Savio, on the number 17 shirt at Spurs. Whether Tottenham can restore the form that made him worth chasing is the more interesting question.

A £75m fee for a shrinking role

Interest from Tottenham in Savio goes back further than this transfer window. Under then-manager Thomas Frank, Spurs tried and failed to sign him last summer, and he stayed at City instead. That decision did little for his career: under Pep Guardiola last season he was restricted to seven Premier League starts. Roberto de Zerbi has now completed the deal Frank could not, two years after City paid Troyes £30.8m for the same player - Tottenham's £75m fee, plus the possible £10m in add-ons, represents a significant rise in valuation for a player who made just seven Premier League starts last season.

He leaves City with 84 appearances to his name, having scored seven times and provided 16 assists across two campaigns. City's own farewell was warm but brief - "Wishing you all the best, Savinho." Spurs' reply carried the correction built in: "Welcome to Tottenham, Savio."

Why he's Savio again

The name switch is not just a footnote. Savio, whose full name is Savio Moreira de Oliveira, said in 2024 that Brazil's national side had printed "Savinho" on his shirt, and that he'd requested City keep the nickname for luck when he arrived in 2024. It stayed with him for two seasons. Now, starting again under a different manager, he's dropped it. It's a minor detail, but it reads as him drawing a line under his time at City - a new shirt, literally and otherwise, after a last campaign that fell short of what either side wanted.

Savio himself framed the move as opportunity rather than escape. "It's taken a while but I'm very happy to be here," he said, calling it "a wonderful opportunity at a brilliant club with one of the best managers in the world." De Zerbi welcomed the signing in similar terms, describing Savio as someone who "brings energy, imagination and quality in wide positions." The Tottenham boss added that the winger has the confidence to run at defenders and the invention to change matches on his own.

The numbers Tottenham are actually buying

Take away the fee and the surname reversal, and the case for signing him leans almost entirely on one campaign: 2024-25, when he supplied eight Premier League assists, all created from open play, in just 1,773 minutes on the pitch - a tally only five players in the division bettered. By minutes played, Savio's open-play assist rate of 0.41 per 90 ranked third across the Premier League, and only Salah bettered his 2.2 chances created per 90.

Carrying the ball was where he did most damage. Among players who reached 1,000 Premier League minutes that season, nobody bar Manchester City team-mate Jeremy Doku racked up more progressive carries of 10 metres or further than Savio's 6.8 per 90. He also topped the league for carries that led directly to a chance, at 1.3 per 90 - only Son Heung-min turned a carry into an assist more often. His dribbling numbers backed this up: 2.6 completed per 90 at a 51% success rate, often used to pull defenders out of position before he found a team-mate.

This strength showed even more clearly during his loan spell at Girona in 2023-24, the season that made his name. He logged 2,989 minutes in La Liga, spent 65% of that time on the left flank, scored nine goals and laid on eight assists, becoming one of the league's most feared players in one-on-one duels. His role changed once he got to City. Across two Premier League seasons there, the right flank was where he played most often - 36% of his minutes, against 20% on the left. That flexibility is part of the appeal for De Zerbi now.

Why the minutes disappeared

The uncomfortable part of this deal is the gap between that 2024-25 output and what followed. Savio's game time collapsed after City brought in winger Antoine Semenyo from Bournemouth in January last season. He ended the campaign with 821 Premier League minutes, a single goal and a single assist, and played in just 31% of City's minutes across all competitions - well down on the 54% share he had the season before. Those numbers don't read like a starter being reluctantly moved on; they read like a player whose manager had already looked elsewhere before the transfer happened.

Tottenham's bet, in effect, is that the 2024-25 data is the truer picture of Savio's ceiling, and that last season's decline was circumstantial rather than a permanent judgement on his ability. It is a reasonable bet. It is still a bet.

The bigger picture at Spurs

Savio's arrival continues a heavy summer of spending under De Zerbi. Mateus Fernandes joined from West Ham, Sandro Tonali from Newcastle and Jan Paul van Hecke from Brighton, taking Tottenham's outlay on that trio alone to £312m before Savio's fee is added on top. The club has also added defenders Marcos Senesi and Andy Robertson, plus goalkeeper Martin Dubravka, all on free transfers. There's more City business in the pipeline too: Spurs are reportedly closing in on Egypt forward Omar Marmoush, with reports of a "good chance" that deal is done before the 1 September deadline - a second major piece of business between the two clubs this window.

That scale of spending sits against a mixed recent run of results. Tottenham won three, drew three and lost four of their last ten matches across all competitions, a stretch that included a 0-3 home defeat by Nottingham Forest and a 0-1 loss away to Sunderland. City, over the same period, won six, drew three and lost just once, at home to Aston Villa. Head-to-head, the two sides have met twice recently: City lost 0-2 at home in August 2025, then drew 2-2 with Spurs in February 2026 - Manchester City remain without a win against Tottenham across that sample. De Zerbi's side are investing heavily to close a gap that current form suggests is still real.

What Tottenham need to be right about

None of this makes Savio a bad signing. It makes him a specific kind of gamble: a player with genuinely elite chance-creation and carrying numbers from one season, and a sharply reduced role in the next, joining a club that has already committed hundreds of millions of pounds this summer and is still searching for consistency on the pitch. If De Zerbi restores the conditions that produced Savio's 2024-25 numbers - regular minutes, a settled wide role, licence to carry the ball at defenders - Tottenham have bought one of the most productive creative wide players in the division. If last season's decline at City turns out to reflect something closer to his level than an aberration, £75m will look like a lot of money for seven Premier League starts.

Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.