Tottenham confirmed the arrivals of just two players in the January transfer window; DeAndre Yedlin, who actually signed last summer, and Dele Alli, who has been loaned back to MK Dons.

Despite the fact Spurs did not sign anyone in the winter window last year and have rarely made a substantial signing halfway through a season, many supporters have been left disappointed and concerned as to why their club did not seem to make significant efforts to make new additions.

There are a number of reasons why. Firstly, it is important to heed what head coach Mauricio Pochettino said throughout the window and before. He really is happy with the squad he has and believes they can still improve. He did not push the club for new recruits.

Pochettino has managed to convince the majority of his players that his methods will bring the club success and has established the team as credible top-four candidates – a feat that should not be understated given the extent to which the group was unstable when he took over.

Only a handful have fallen short of his expectations enough to want rid of them, and it has been clear who those players are for some time given their distances from the first-team. Spurs were prepared to sell Aaron Lennon and Kyle Naughton and find new, if only temporary, homes for Emmanuel Adebayor and one of either captain Younes Kaboul or fellow defender Vlad Chiriches.

It also emerged on deadline day that Etienne Capoue was another player free to find first-team football elsewhere until the end of the season. But why, in the end, did only Lennon and Naughton find new clubs? And why did Tottenham not bring in any reinforcements?

The first real problem Spurs had rests within the uncertainty over Franco Baldini's future and the extent to which new head of recruitment Paul Mitchell had an input. It is understood that January is likely to have been Baldini's last transfer window as the club's technical director, with Mitchell set to take Spurs in a different direction in the summer and beyond.

It is understood the club were reluctant to make new additions under Baldini's guidance. He made it known early in the window that the club were in the market for a new striker, for example, but only tentative interest was shown in targets such as Danny Ings, Saido Berahino and Emmanuel Emenike, and deals never materialised for any of them. A deal was also possible for Yevhen Konoplyanka, via Baldini, but again this was not followed through.

Mitchell's input, meanwhile, had been limited. He had been “finding his feet”, according to one source, and “getting to know the club politically”. Yet, despite this, Spurs swooped quickly on the eve of deadline day to take Alli from the clutches of Aston Villa on Mitchell's advice. Mitchell signed Alli as a youth whilst head of recruitment at MK Dons in 2010 and has watched his development closely.

However, another obstacle Spurs had, like most clubs, was and will continue to be a financial one. The tightening of Financial Fair Play rules may have permanently cut the heads off most spend-thrift monsters in Europe, such as Chelsea and Manchester City, and, remember, Tottenham's own splurge last season was made only having secured the promise of £86million from Real Madrid for Gareth Bale.

With the cost of Tottenham's impending new stadium increasing – its intended capacity and final bill still uncertain and the whole thing delayed altogether over a High Court order – Spurs had to offload fringe players to afford new ones. This, in turn, led to their third problem; attempting to find new homes for the aforementioned players, apart from Lennon, proved unsuccessful.

Daniel Levy is an immovable negotiator at the best of times and conducts business on his terms only. Reports from Turkey suggest Besiktas were priced out of signing Kaboul permanently midway through the window, while several Premier League clubs were put off permanent deals for Lennon because of the cost, leading to a loan. Swansea gritted their teeth and shelled out £5million for Naughton days after an arse-kicking at home to Chelsea.

But what happened regarding Adebayor's loan move to West Ham on deadline day was something else. It is understood Adebayor was reluctant to join clubs struggling in the bottom half, while Levy made it clear days before the deadline that Spurs would not loan players to top-half rivals.

It is accurate to suggest West Ham knew this but still believed Levy could be persuaded otherwise – something that was not only naive but also had disappointing knock-on effects for their own forward Carlton Cole, who was stopped from joining West Brom, and Baggies striker Brown Ideye, who was on the verge of moving to Qatar.

January has always been a notoriously difficult month in which to conduct sensible business and, due in the most part to FFP, that is now even more so the case. Tottenham's future with regards to player transfers appears to be under the stewardship of Pochettino and Mitchell and it is to this where Spurs fans should find some solace and optimism.