Don't most of those players come in for free at very young ages?
Mount's been at Chelsea since he was 6.
I'm curious how all of this works actually if anyone has insight about that.
How does the life of a precocious young footballer in London progress?
Most clubs will sign up players at a young age.
But each and every year some players may be dropped by a club as they are not seen to be making progress, and sometimes players want to change as they don't like coach/don't think they are playing enough/etc
Its also worth mentioning that at younger age groups, the ratio of players to coaches can be as high as 1 ; 30, but by the time of full time training (Academy Year 1) that ratio drops to 1: 15 (maximum allowed under PL regulations ) - Spurs can have intakes at that age of anywhere from 10 to typically 14 players.
So at that Academy Year 1 stage Spurs might have half that intake who have trained at Spurs from lets say age 10, but the other half of the youngsters will have joined at different ages. And there seems to be a mad scramble at age 16 to get the final 'better' youngsters into the academy.
Chelsea and ManCity have a reputation of paying youngsters wages which are multiple times what other clubs are paying. So no surprise they do get a fair number of very good youngsters going to them - but don't forget before Lampard brought through lots of youngsters, I think that John Terry had been about the only youngster brought through in a decade. with many very good youngsters leaving to join other clubs.
London is a very competitive recruiting ground as not only are all the London clubs recruiting but Man City are very active - possibly one of the reasons why Brentford no longer run an academy.
Spurs had a time pre-Poch when a fair number of youngsters got through to play a number of games for first team as squad players - both through loaning players out and playing them in first team. Its always been understood that academies bring through players for the first team, but a number of the players will eventually prove to not get to the level required and move on - giving useful transfer fees. No surprise that Poch decided to prune excess youngsters - and those sold (Mason and Bentaleb who were Poch's first choice at CM in his first season, Carroll, Townsend, Pritchard, Veljkovic and others) generated over £100m in transfer fees which went to boost transfer funds, whilst keeping the brest youngster in Kane
What is a surprise is that over Poch's reign only Winks was brought through - and with Poch not approving loans for youngsters, the only way to get youngsters minutes was playing for the first team.
Strangely it was Mourhino who resurrected the loan system which enabled Skipp to get the experience needed to bring him into the first team, and other youngsters have also benefitted from loans.
However the fact remains that over 6 years there was NO adequate system to bring youngsters through (no loans) - so no surprise we now find ourselves in a position where we do not have enough HG players. And yet in those 6 years we had 2 players from a World Cup winning U17 team (Eyoma and Oakley-Boothe) and a number of other highly rated youngsters, so had there been a better system over those 6 years we might well have had a similar number of squad players coming through - and maybe a further £100m in transfer fees incoming and possibly one or two who might have been good enough to stay.
We are where we are, and need to be aware that whilst we have a number of promising youngsters coming through, its very unlikely we will get another Skipp come through to be a full time regular next season, simply because it takes several years to bring most youngsters through/
Potential players who might get to become first team squad players might include :
Markandy - 20 year old winger.striker
White - 20 year old M/CM
Parrett - 18 year old striker
John - 18 year old CM
Paskotsi - 18 year old CB
Devine - 17 year old midfielder
Scarlett - 17 year old striker
And there are quite a few others who might make it such as Walcott (CB),, Lusala (RB), Bennett (winger/striker), Robson (midfield) and others, they just need the breaks to get experience. Having said that the odds are probably that only say 25% of these will get to play more than a couple of games at Spurs - and in a very good year we might bring through two players into first team.
So in short, provided the club loans out youngsters to good clubs, the manager plays some in first teams and importantly allows half a dozen or more to play in pre-season games, we could/should resume getting youngsters through into the first team - as squad players. But it will be one or two players a year not more - worth remembering that when Lampard brought about 6 players into the first team in one year that was from about 4 age groups (ie one or two from multiple age groups).
