The idea was that Japhet Tanganga would go to a Bundesliga club to play first-team football and eventually train so he could get his feet somewhere other than Tottenham Hotspur.
That has not happened at all. Since moving to Augsburg on loan in the summer, Tanganga has not played a second of football and, according to Charlie Eccleshare of The Athletic, his loan will be terminated and he will return to Spurs this month.
Japhet has no one to blame for his situation. He was injured shortly after arriving at Augsburg, and in the meantime Augsburg sacked their manager.
The new manager, Jess Thorup, believes that Tanganga is not part of his plans for the future, which means he is glued to the bench and has little chance of leaving it.
According to Eccleshare, the idea is to try and send Japhet back out on loan as soon as possible, with Premier League, Championship and Serie A clubs interested in him. That would be best – even if he does go to a lower league to play football, playing Championship football is significantly better than going out on loan and NOT playing REAL football.
However, this continues the worrying trend of Spurs players going out on loan to get into bad situations and have their loans cut short. It’s hard to work out whether the number of players in this situation – Sergio Reguilon, Dane Scarlett, Djed Spence and now Tanganga – is a systemic thing or just a case of really dumb and bad luck.