As long as he can play on the wing better than Werner, from me it's a yes.
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Player Jamie Donley
- Thread starter SpiderSpurs
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Agreed but Spurs short inn that position in preseason so Donley played LB for part of the time (Abbott, a DM also played RB and once at LB) - from the player development point of view Donley was a striker until 19 months ago before dropping back to play as a no 10 last season.
One thing Jamie has never had to do consistently is to learn to defend which playing as an attacking CM he would need to do some of (just like Kulusevski and Maddison do) , so it maybe playing in preseason at LB has been a good introduction to learning to defend regularly.
BTW it didn't stop Abbott putting in a great vertical pass through to Donley who ran the last 10 metres to the touchline to put in a fantastic cross to Mikey Moore for his first ever senior goal (aided by Lankshear distracting the Japanese defender who should have been watching Moore). So on a first preseason he probably learned a bit of defending whilst showing how good his anticipation and execution of a cross under pressure in mens football. I think any manager would have been pleased to see all of that in one preseason match
Something that might have ben an option in January for any of the youngsters (mainly those qualifying as List B - essentially u21's who have been at Spurs for more than 2 years) which would have included Donley, Devine and Abbott, although that would mean they could not have been re-loaned out this season, so unless Amge played them a fair amount (say 800 mins in 2nd half of the season) their development might stall.
At age 26, Solomon 's loan probably did not have a recall clause in his loan deal.
But no players were called back from loan.
He could probably play LM but not LW, just doesn't have the speed to do that effectively, so might not get into the forward positions to put in crosses from byline etc.
Crosses from deep - yes no problem, as Pep Guardiola might have spotted he's got a good accurate long passing range.
I recall Liverpool either last season or the season before playing lots of youths due to an injury crises. They seemed to have done ok during that period IIRC. We've been playing knackered and sometimes not recovered players from injury, instead.
The problem seems to be that we are utilising young players as part of our first team already, The only senior aged player we bought in the summer was Solanke but now we're using 19 yr old Tel. So using Donley et al is going to bring the starting age of our team down to an unusually low average.
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He could play a role RWF though, like City play Bernardo Silva. Wide playmaking attacker.
His left peg is much more suited there than LWF and Attacking Midfield needs dynamic movement which he presently, and may always, lacks.
Agree with all that.
In my 'Squad 2024-25' thread I suggested we might keep Devine and/or Donley simply because I thought the squad to be smaller than desirable to go from playing only about 40 games last season to go to playing closer to 60 games this season (maximum I calculated at 69 games if we went all the way in all tournaments) and those 2 players qualified as List B so didn't take up squad places but we didn't.
Its a balance as Ange had to commit to giving them minutes (as he has done for Mikey Moore and to get Bergvall up to speed after a season playing in Swedish league which is a step down from PL), to ensure players develop ..... otherwise we have a similar issue next season.
I'm hoping that next season, Spurs consider keeping back Devine (2 years loans as a DM/AM) , Donley (AM), Abbott (DM/FB) and Phillips (CB) - all will have had at least a year on loan and all qualify as List B so do not take up squad places and all of whom have high approval ratings at their current loan clubs. But that does require the manager to play them as otherwise their development is best served with another loan - and to play them at Spurs might require us to be in europe next season to have a lot of games to play in !
He’s playing 90 mins every week in league 1 right now. That’s better than the odd performance off the bench for us
Well hopefully we'll offload Werner, Richarlison, Bissouma, in the summer, and further reduce Son's playing time, I think we might also lose Romero and Maddison.
I don't see a reason to purchase more kids from the Championship or from abroad, we've got plenty of talent such as Donley coming though. So if we ain't bringing in players in their prime/mid' 20's in the summer, and target more 18 year olds instead, I'd prefer that we use are own youth players, otherwise we may as well sell them.
I'd probably keep Maddison atm, but might offload Bentancur who is nowhere as good as he was pre-injury if we can get in one top guy to replace Bissouma and Bentanur, plus getting Gray to play DM plus bringing in Devine and Abbott into CM - and Abbott can also cover RB and maybe LB.
To supplement Maddison, I'd like to ease Donley in to play in that Kulusevski/Maddison type role.
That way we add (net) two more players to squad to increase numbers, but as we then have 3 List B players we have actually created a spare space in the squad which can be used to reinforce another position.
I'm not against purchasing a top prospect from outside of Spurs but with the number of excellent prospects we do have, we shouldn't need to buy many, and use the money saved by using our own squad players to ensure we get in a few very good experienced players from outside Spurs. And whilst we inevitably will need to sell some youth players on, we really do need to use them whilst List B or Club Trained status to enlarge our squad to minimise the effect of injuries to other players as far as practicable - I think Redknapp was on the right lines by often having half a dozen youngsters available to supplement his squad
Struggling to remember a youth prospect having a better loan in recent years?
Would have to fancy his chances of getting into the Spurs squad next season amongst our collection of average midfielders.
Would have to fancy his chances of getting into the Spurs squad next season amongst our collection of average midfielders.
Only buy to loan back really like Bergvall, Udogie and now Vuskovic. I get the feeling Yang is going to be have a good time at QPR.
Stop that Jamie, these people have families….
Cheers Jamie. Gives Wycombe a bit more breathing space away from the plastic welshmen.
There’s something a bit Dele-ish about the sort of things he’s trying at the moment. It’s the sheer impudence and confidence allied with the talent. Dele came straight from League 1 and took the PL by storm…
He looked good in pre-season cameos out of position.
The worry is Ange seems to prefer legs over everything else which is why Sarr has played so much.
But it's hard to ignore what Donley is doing. With quality like that you can forgive a drop off in physicality (see Maddison).
The worry is Ange seems to prefer legs over everything else which is why Sarr has played so much.
But it's hard to ignore what Donley is doing. With quality like that you can forgive a drop off in physicality (see Maddison).