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Transfers January Transfer Thread 2024

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Taking a results only view, possibly, if you consider Winks & KWP only, a failure but when you consider the outside factors mentioned such as the talent produced from the academy at the time/the personnel leading the academy and the clubs priorities being almost solely focussed on the stadium build, not so much

This doesn't make much sense..... With trf funds reduced by the stadium project you'd think that would put more onus on making the best of the academy talent in order to maximise the funds that were available.

As someone else mentioned above; KWP v Aurier, Edwards v GKN etc.
 
It needs the people at the top driving the end goal though, as has been stated by someone else when Paratichi came in he was reportedly shocked/surprised by the state of our academy - i bet if he had come in when Inglethorpe was here and prior to the stadium build he'd have had a different view.

Accept that.

But if the development work is not going on, the players are not going to look good.

I'm delighted Paratici noticed the issues as youth system needed a good old spring clean to bring it back to life.

As a small point, u21's should have been relegated last season and standard of play poor overall. This season top of the league with mostly same players plus Donley a year older, couple of others injured last season back. But the shear enthusiasm of the players this season which wasn't there last season has already got them through a few tough matches.

So whatever has changed has had an excellent short term result - and that can only be coaching and a general well being feeliing.
 
I think it's the club & academy's role to get the players to a level in which they can be of use to the first team manager - firstly by training them up the right way and secondly via organising the loans as a kind of finishing off department, we used to be very good in this area and from memory Sherwood had a job/role relating specifically to managing the players going out on loan, all that seemed to fall by the wayside though, again if my memory serves it was Inglethorpe who was in charge when this was taking place and then it was wgen he left that things started to go south.

Between Stadium build, Inglethorpe leaving and the first team competing at a higher level than before (harder to blood youngsters) we stopped producing good enough players from the academy. I don't think that's on the manager at the time.
 
It might be a bit premature to say that

But Phillips has played a dozen or so games at Blackburn in Championship and well regarded at E u19 level so a decent track record,

What's been good is the fan and local reporter reaction generally saying Phillips has looked very good at that level, looked far more comfortable than many more established players etc.

So lots of good very signs.

Yes very good signs. But we're still talking about an 18 year old. He should be playing regular football for the next 3 or even 4 years of his young career.

How about we create an actual pipeline for our young players where they step in when they're ready and not when we need them.

There is no way, at this moment, we should be penciling in Phillips or Dorrington for next season or unless they show tremendous growth 2 seasons.
 
You can't compare, though. NFL teams don't play in international competitions outside the US, where the rules may be different. If the PL institutes a salary cap, teams will be complaining that it will make them uncompetitive in Europe. There has to be a European salary cap, in order for this to work, but don't see that happening.
European salary cap is pretty much unworkable, not only due to the EU but due to different tax regimes.
 
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It's a balancing act to have a functioning squad and also plan for the future.

Phillips sounds like he's max 1 more season away. Dorrington after him. If we sign another under 25 CB the pathway to the first team dries up.

If Davies decided he wanted to move and play every week in the summer then we need another CB but you'd still think that would be a left footed player if possible. Best case scenario is Davies is around next season as well and covers LCB of Dragusin or VDV can't play. Then the year after Phillips and Dorrington are ready to step in.

1 season away from what? Sitting on the bench ?

He should be loaned out for the next 2-3 seasons where he's playing every match.

Let's see how the rest of his season at Plymouth goes. Maybe he can get a full season there again next season, or even better a PL loan.
 
I think it's the club & academy's role to get the players to a level in which they can be of use to the first team manager - firstly by training them up the right way and secondly via organising the loans as a kind of finishing off department, we used to be very good in this area and from memory Sherwood had a job/role relating specifically to managing the players going out on loan, all that seemed to fall by the wayside though, again if my memory serves it was Inglethorpe who was in charge when this was taking place and then it was wgen he left that things started to go south.

Between Stadium build, Inglethorpe leaving and the first team competing at a higher level than before (harder to blood youngsters) we stopped producing good enough players from the academy. I don't think that's on the manager at the time.

Academy should be able to develop players good enough, this sits really with the DoF and/or head of the Academy. If then good enough players are produced and the manager won't use them then it's on the manager. I am pretty sure Ange will player the youngster once he feels they are good enough, he happily uses Veliz, Veliz isn't an academy player but still extremely young but he appears ready for top flight football and Donley is slowly coming into play as well.
 
Madueke is an ok player but I wouldn't be that impressed if we signed him. I don't see many players we failed badly who should have been far better.

Chelsea is a case in point, they had far bigger talents on the whole than us but just went off selling them, if we did that I would be pissed off to lose out on Rice, Tomori, Ake, Abraham, Chalobah, Guehi, Loftus-Cheek. They also still have Colwell, James, Gallagher. That is miles and miles clear of us talent wise.

I mean if Poch or Jose had those and didn't use them I could understand the criticism but I don't think Winks or Onamah being used better would have made much of a difference.

The point your missing though is we do not know who we missed out on, We do know we had a number of decent squad players coming through pre-Poch - Townsend, CCV, Mason, Bentaleb, Veljkovic and no reason to believe players of equivalent ability were not there under 'Poch. As an example E u17's won their world cup whilst Poch was our manager and Spurs had 4 players in that squad.

There is no expectation for all the youngsters ti succeed but the 4 who didn't develop under Poch are some of the examples of players who with a better coach at developing players, we might have got a first team player

Ultimately developing yout is a numbers game, We get in about 12 a year into u18's and we hope to average one or two from each year group night interest the first team coach.

The fact that we had so few after 6 years simply means the development was not working under Poch. Maybe he wasn't interested/didn't see it as a priority, whatever . The development just didn't happen
 
Don't forget Spurs lost a number of its top youth players because of its failing to develop players

The best known of those players probably Noni Madueke

And other youth players started to avoid signing for Spurs and went elsewhere.

So in a nut shell, getting a reputation for poor youth player development means you increasingly have poorer players joining and the job becomes harder.

As a youth watcher I'd say pre-Poch probably half of each intake of a dozen players looked to have good potential (but knowing one or two actually would make it), but towards the end of Poch's reign, maybe only 2 or 3 players of the annual intakes looked to be interesting. So the odds are against getting youth players through
We had a shit hot first team, for good and for ill, we chose to ride that team as far as it would take us. Meant no big fees coming in and less room for progression.
 
Our youth back in 2011-15 or so was definitely very talented.

Velkjovic, Townsend, Bentaleb, Onomah, Smith, Pritchard, Kane, Winks, Carter-Vickers, Walker-Peters, Edwards to name a few.

Is a really solid pool of players. 7 of them went on to become internationals for their countries. And most of that list have ended up playing top level football.

It's easy to look back now and say most weren't good enough. But a fair few of them also never played consistent men's competitive football until they were in their 20s... That's a whole chunk of development missed that I think alot of people don't realise.

We could have saved ourselves millions by developing someone like KWP instead of spunking it on Aurier. Wasting money on Nkoudou when we could have developed Edwards etc.

Honestly, I don't think it'd be hard to say that if Kane never got those loans and simply played reserve football with the odd bench place or eventually getting his first loan at 21 or 22. He wouldn't be at Bayern right now nor would he have been ours and England's top goalscorer.
Plus if Soldado hadn’t been such a crap signing , he would have been loaned out again or even sold.
Would probably have made it with another team, such was his self motivation.
 
1 season away from what? Sitting on the bench ?

He should be loaned out for the next 2-3 seasons where he's playing every match.

Let's see how the rest of his season at Plymouth goes. Maybe he can get a full season there again next season, or even better a PL loan.

I concur........ Won't do Phillips much good feeding off scraps here as CB4/5 next season...... He needs miles on the clock over the next couple of years.

If Davies isn't trusted to be CB4 next season (which I do think he is worthy of) then buy someone in the summer.
 
Yes very good signs. But we're still talking about an 18 year old. He should be playing regular football for the next 3 or even 4 years of his young career.

How about we create an actual pipeline for our young players where they step in when they're ready and not when we need them.

There is no way, at this moment, we should be penciling in Phillips or Dorrington for next season or unless they show tremendous growth 2 seasons.

There is no reason for Ange not to have a long look at Phillips in pre-season.

One of the biggest challenges for18 year olds is the physicality of mens games. But Phillips already has a man's body and strength. So its one less issue which might have prevented Phillips from playing PL football next season.
 
We had a shit hot first team, for good and for ill, we chose to ride that team as far as it would take us. Meant no big fees coming in and less room for progression.

Perfectly valid point

But the result is we do not have enough 'club trained' footballers here next season.

Other teams managers don't fall into the trap of ignoring youth development as it has consequences
 
Rice, Tomori, Ake, Abraham, Chalobah, Guehi, Loftus-Cheek. They also still have Colwell, James, Gallagher. That is miles and miles clear of us talent wise.

Rice - Playing men's football since he was 18
Tomori - 3 loans by the age of 21
Ake - 3 loans by the age of 21
Abraham - 3 loans by the age of 22
Chalobah - 3 loans by the age of 21
Guehi - 2 loans by the age of 21
James - Loaned out at 19
Gallagher - 4 loans by the age of 22
Colwill - 2 loans by the age of 20

Interestingly, Loftus Cheek was the one who was loaned out after the age of 21 but he's also the one I'd say suffered alot from not being given competitive games of men's football from young.

But those above, whilst being part of a ridiculous golden era at Chelsea, benefitted massively by being loaned out and getting game time.

Could probably add Mount to that too. Who had 2 loans by the age of 20 too.
 
The point your missing though is we do not know who we missed out on, We do know we had a number of decent squad players coming through pre-Poch - Townsend, CCV, Mason, Bentaleb, Veljkovic and no reason to believe players of equivalent ability were not there under 'Poch. As an example E u17's won their world cup whilst Poch was our manager and Spurs had 4 players in that squad.

There is no expectation for all the youngsters ti succeed but the 4 who didn't develop under Poch are some of the examples of players who with a better coach at developing players, we might have got a first team player

Ultimately developing yout is a numbers game, We get in about 12 a year into u18's and we hope to average one or two from each year group night interest the first team coach.

The fact that we had so few after 6 years simply means the development was not working under Poch. Maybe he wasn't interested/didn't see it as a priority, whatever . The development just didn't happen

I get the point I just don't see that really as sitting with Poch or afterwards Jose. Modern football has moved away from the Fergie runs everything, we have an academy and head of academy to build and recruit these players and clearly its been nowhere near good enough. If Poch or Jose got given Chelsea's academy I am sure we would have 4-5 starters from that place, I appreciate Chelsea spent more money on it but the time and effort to fix certain players of lesser talent probably wasn't there.
 
Rice - Playing men's football since he was 18
Tomori - 3 loans by the age of 21
Ake - 3 loans by the age of 21
Abraham - 3 loans by the age of 22
Chalobah - 3 loans by the age of 21
Guehi - 2 loans by the age of 21
James - Loaned out at 19
Gallagher - 4 loans by the age of 22
Colwill - 2 loans by the age of 20

Interestingly, Loftus Cheek was the one who was loaned out after the age of 21 but he's also the one I'd say suffered alot from not being given competitive games of men's football from young.

Loaning out is good but you need clubs who think they are good enough to play. We loaned out Scarlett and have recalled him after he just sat on the bench, that isn't going to help him. Pretty much all those players are top draw. Chelsea at youth level under Abramovich where know to pay huge money to take the best players at young ages. By contrast we had to change our model to pay more to stop Mikey Moore being pinched. Chelsea's youth set up was a monster for 5-10 years.
 
Loaning out is good but you need clubs who think they are good enough to play. We loaned out Scarlett and have recalled him after he just sat on the bench, that isn't going to help him. Pretty much all those players are top draw. Chelsea at youth level under Abramovich where know to pay huge money to take the best players at young ages. By contrast we had to change our model to pay more to stop Mikey Moore being pinched.

It certainly helps picking the right club.

We used to do it really well under Redknapp. Whether it be Leyton Orient or even Yeovil where plenty of our lads got good game time.

Devine and Phillips both going to Plymouth and getting game time instantly bodes well.

I believe when Paratici came in, he restructured the youth wage model. He's been massive for us really.
 
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