The 92/93 season under the Venables/Livermore/Clemence unusual management structure saw a considerable number of youngsters from the youth set up make their first team debuts and impressed with follow up apparances such as Nick Barmby, Andy Turner, Kevin Watson, Kevin Dearden, Stuart Nethercott, Danny Hill and Sol Campbell (other also made their first team debuts but their names escape me). A young Steve Carr and Gerard McMahon were brought over from Ireland and were impressing alongside Steve Clemence and Chris Day in the youth team (won the youth fa cup) and reserves. Ian Walker, Dave Tuttle and John Hendry made their debuts in the previous two seasons and continued to show promise. Darren Caskey was captain of the England U20s and gaining rave reviews.
Added to this we signed the uncapped Darren Anderton, Teddy Sheringham, Neil Ruddock and Dean Austin. The first 3 would later be capped for England. Although they finished 8th that season and had a fair few dodgy results, they had a few spells when the team clicked and played some of the best football I had seen at Spurs. With a clear emphasis on youth and so many promising youth footballers breaking through. I thought Spurs were going to be the team for the next decade.
But Spurs being Spursy had to sack Venables quite rightly for non football reasons. Ardiles replaced Clemence and Livermore. Ardiles finding himself under pressure from a large hostile pro Venables anti Sugar fan base whilst sliding into a relegation battle padded out the squad with players such as Jason Dozzell, David Kerslake, Colin Calderwood, Kevin Scott, Ronnie Rosenthal and the return of veteran Mickey Hazard. A lot of those youth team players found their pathway blocked or simply did not kick on as expected. The potential of the 92/93 team was never realised and Spurs spent the rest of the 90s in the wilderness, whilst the Man Utd class of 92 emerged and the rest as they say is history.
