Tottenham's Surprise Signing: Omar Marmoush from Manchester City
Tottenham’s summer rebuild has taken another sharp twist – and this time it comes with a surprise for Eintracht Frankfurt.
No payday for Frankfurt in Marmoush deal
BBC Sport understands Frankfurt will receive no sell-on fee from Omar Marmoush’s move from Manchester City to Tottenham Hotspur.
For weeks, speculation has swirled around the numbers behind Spurs’ double swoop for Savio and Marmoush, both arriving from City in this window. Reports suggested City had inflated Savio’s £75m fee to limit what they would owe Frankfurt on Marmoush, who left the Bundesliga club in 2025 with an expected sell-on clause attached.
Frankfurt have now cut through the noise: they will not see a penny from Marmoush’s latest move.
That revelation neatly kills one of the more intriguing subplots of the window – and leaves the focus squarely on what Tottenham are building, and what City are cashing in on.
Spurs’ shopping list – and the ‘bomba’ signing
So how many more will Spurs try to bring through the door?
A lot rests on who leaves once Marmoush and Savio are officially through the door from Manchester City. At the start of the summer, Tottenham were targeting five major signings, backed up by several free transfers, as they hand Roberto De Zerbi the tools to reshape his squad.
De Zerbi made it clear he wanted a “bomba” signing to go with Savio. Marmoush, with his pedigree and profile, fits that description.
The scale of the rebuild is obvious. Tottenham have well over 30 senior players on their books, depending on which academy graduates you count. Outgoings will define what else they can do.
But the type of player they are prioritising is becoming clear.
What Marmoush brings to Spurs
Omar Marmoush arrives with a solid, if unspectacular, body of work at Manchester City.
Since joining from Frankfurt, he scored 16 goals in 62 appearances in all competitions. Eight of those came in 36 games in the 2025-26 season, but his Premier League minutes dried up badly.
He started only eight league matches, logging around 700 minutes – less than he managed in half a season the year before. The output, on paper, was tidy enough: three goals and three assists in the league, with an expected goals figure of 3.53, almost perfectly aligned with his finishing.
The problem was not what he did. It was how often he was allowed to do it.
Marmoush was trying to carve out a role in a side built around Erling Haaland, while City kept adding more attacking options. Opportunities were always going to be rationed.
At Spurs, the picture is very different.
Dominic Solanke has battled injury issues for 18 months. Richarlison is into the final year of his contract. The door is open for a new focal point.
Marmoush is nominally a number nine, but that label barely covers his game. At Frankfurt he led the line, drifted as a second striker and attacked from the left. City used him in similar fashion: mainly central, sometimes off the flank, occasionally just behind another forward.
That positional fluidity screams De Zerbi. Tottenham’s head coach wants forwards who can rotate, press, and stretch defences from multiple angles. Marmoush ticks all of those boxes.
The shoulder runner De Zerbi craves
Former Manchester City defender Nedum Onuoha has watched Marmoush closely. His verdict is simple: the Egyptian is at his best when he lives on the shoulder of the last defender.
As Onuoha sees it, Marmoush needs a team that repeatedly looks to slide passes in behind, forcing defenders to sprint back towards their own goal. That’s when his movement bites.
The data backs that up. Opta’s Premier League numbers from last season show Marmoush averaged 11.46 runs in behind per 90 minutes. That’s virtually identical to Solanke’s 11.61 and ahead of Richarlison’s 10.03. On top of that, he offered more with the ball than both.
Drop that profile into a De Zerbi system built on vertical passes and aggressive positioning, and you can see why Spurs pushed to get this done.
The question now is not whether Marmoush suits Tottenham.
It’s how big a role De Zerbi is ready to give him in a squad that is being torn down and rebuilt in real time.
