When Villas-Boas took over in the summer of 2012, we were expecting to work more closely with him, providing a link between the academy and the first team – a path to promote players. That’s what Daniel Levy wanted.
Gareth Bale was sold to
Real Madrid, a lot of money came in and Franco Baldini, who was technical director and in charge of transfers, spent the lot. It was almost £100m – loads of money in those days – and it blocked the pathway to the first team for a lot of the young players.
It’s for that reason that, in our first league game, away at Southampton, Paulinho, who had joined for around £17m in the summer, didn’t even make the squad. Nabil Bentaleb made the matchday squad and we brought him off the bench as Mousa Dembélé’s replacement. That decision sent a message to the players: it doesn’t matter what your name is – if you deserve a chance, you’ll get one.
We won 3-2 (below). Including that game, we won five of the next six in the league and drew the other one.
During that good run of form, we went to Old Trafford on New Year’s Day. You never go to
Manchester United and think you’re going to win – you can’t be arrogant like that – but Tim and Les have this belief about them that gets through to the players.
For that game, we let Michael Carrick and
Wayne Rooney go and collect the ball off the centre-halves and encouraged them to play long. Then we backed our defenders to win the ball and the midfielders to sweep up second balls that fell in that zone. It worked to perfection. We went to Old Trafford and played 90 minutes without ever looking like we weren’t going to win the game – and we did, 2-1.
Towards the end of the season, we started playing a young Harry Kane in place of Soldado.
Soldado’s performances weren’t worthy of his place in the team, and while some managers might have just stuck by him because they knew how good he could be, merit was very important to us.
We started him at home to Sunderland and he scored. The next game, away to West Brom, he got another.
On top of all the players we introduced to Premier League football, there were youngsters like Ryan Fredericks, Adam Smith, Ryan Mason, Tom Carroll, Alex Pritchard, Steven Caulker and Kevin Stewart – all of whom we worked with in the youth teams, and who have gone on to play in the top flight. There are others who have forged careers in the Football League or elsewhere around the world.
We were grateful for the opportunity we’d been given, but we felt as though we repaid the club in our own way – by having the courage to expose Tottenham’s young assets to first-team football.