Former Tottenham boss Terry Venables believes the club is now paying for dragging out their failed deal for Zenit St Petersburg star Andrei Arshavin.

In his column for The Sun, Venables wrote: "Only on Sunday night, after losing 2-0 at Portsmouth, Ramos' No2 Gus Poyet publicly admitted Pavlyuchenko and Darren Bent cannot play together - which suggests Tottenham never intended them to be their main striker partnership.

"They thought they were going to get Arshavin. He would have been Pavlyuchenko's perfect partner and no doubt they would have transferred their international success at Euro 2008 to the Premier League.

"They could have got Arshavin without selling Keane and Berbatov but I suspect their heads got turned by the money and they lost their grip.

"So while the sale of Keane was baffling, the decision to wait to the last minute to sell Berbatov was suicidal."