Why is our academy so shit?

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Our hit rate over the last decade is probably similar to other clubs of our size and stature. I would say the only outlier is Chelsea.
 
I'd agree but from what I have seen in the past 5 years, Woolwich, City, Chelsea, United and Liverpool have radically improved their academies and youth recruitment, both facility and results wise...

Woolwich and Chelsea have had a huge number of prospects perform well recently, and there is no reason our results shouldn't be similar considering we share recruitment pools for the most part.
I don’t know if that is recruitment, talent development or pipeline management honestly. I mean Tanganga couldn’t sniff the first team until a couple months ago. Now he may be considered our second best CB. Skipp is still raw but he should clearly be getting more minutes at DM since we have no one else.

We can’t play all of them and we will lose some, but there seems to be a talent identification gap right now.
 
For Chelsea, given they had about 200 players on loan and paid gazillions to poach a bunch of kids, getting some decent players in after they caught out for being cheating chavs is hardly a surprise
I'd say the issue is more our scouting than anything. Eg gilmour to Chelsea at 15 and on game vs pool looked class. But maybe that's just a volume game we are not playing and for every gilmour there are 10 who are shit.. But does anecdotally feel like wed have been better just playing a bit of football manager and seeing who was good rather than rely on our current scouts.. At least since dele (who was hardly under the radar)
 
So I’m getting:
Utd, Lingard, Rashford, Greenwood, Mctominay, James

Chelsea, James, Odoi, Cheek, Abraham

Woolwich, Willock, Holding

Liverpool, Arnold

City, Foden

Leicester, Grey, Vardy

Spurs, Kane, Winks, Skipp, Tanaganga

What am I missing here?

I am biased, but I like our guys the best
 
So I’m getting:
Utd, Lingard, Rashford, Greenwood, Mctominay, James

Chelsea, James, Odoi, Cheek, Abraham

Woolwich, Willock, Holding

Spurs, Kane, Winks, Skipp, Tanaganga

What am I missing here?
You forgot some players here but ok. More interessting for me is the current situation and this is a bigger concern. If you compare the youngsters from the last 3 years:

Spurs: KWP, Skipp, Tangana

Chelsea: Abraham, Musonda, Tomori, CHO, Mount, James, Gilmor

Woolwich: Maitland-Niles, Nkethia, Saka, Willock, Nelson, Smith-Rowe

United: McTomminay, Perreira, Greenwood, Wiliams, Chong

So much more potential in these Clubs. I mean Chelsea invested a lot in the youth setup and I think this pays out now. Woolwich changed the whole youth setup with new coaches and a new philosphie. And from what I read these clubs have also a lot of promising youngsters in the youth teams > Also Liverpool and City.
 
I think our academy (now the Training ground is fully up and running) will only attract more and more talent in the next few years... by all accounts it (along with the Ground) is second to none in WORLD football, let alone Europe...
young players will be desperate to come and train there...

But they're not ready yet!! :mourthumb:
 
Our hit rate over the last decade is probably similar to other clubs of our size and stature. I would say the only outlier is Chelsea.

Who have actually built their academy upon a rule-breaking youth recruitment policy.
 
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So I’m getting:
Utd, Lingard, Rashford, Greenwood, Mctominay, James

Chelsea, James, Odoi, Cheek, Abraham

Woolwich, Willock, Holding

Liverpool, Arnold

City, Foden

Leicester, Grey, Vardy

Spurs, Kane, Winks, Skipp, Tanaganga

What am I missing here?
 
Back in the early 80's you could almost field a full team of decent players that came through the ranks.

Parks
Perryman
Hughton
Miller

Brooke
Hazard
Hoddle

Falco
 
The issue is not just getting good young players through but getting decent players through so they can be sold if they don't work out. Woolwich managed to flog Iwobi for 30m+ and now they have Saka/Nelson/Wilock/Nketiah/Smith-Rowe these are just the ones who have broken out at the moment... a few of them will work out while the others are already developed enough to fetch a decent fee and essentially this is what we need.
We used to do this all the time pre-Poch. The issue was we stopped loaning players out so they stopped getting minutes and exposure to help facilitate a sale. This is not an academy issue and I don't expect it to continue.
 
Our hit rate over the last decade is probably similar to other clubs of our size and stature. I would say the only outlier is Chelsea.
I'd agree but from what I have seen in the past 5 years, Woolwich, City, Chelsea, United and Liverpool have radically improved their academies and youth recruitment, both facility and results wise...

Woolwich and Chelsea have had a huge number of prospects perform well recently, and there is no reason our results shouldn't be similar considering we share recruitment pools for the most part.
 
It pains me to see it and to say it. Liverpool, Chelsea, Woolwich, Leicester - all bringing in youngsters from their academy who seem very quickly to be up to the task and make a real positive contribution to the team. Why not us?

Who was the last real success from the academy before Harry Kane? Ledley? Indeed, in my lifetime there have been very few stars - Kane, King, Hoddle, Hughton, Perryman. There must be more but I can't think of any ...

Mostly we seem to churn out journeymen players who are simply not good enough in terms of skill, athleticism, attitude - or all 3 - for a top Premier League squad and are destined for life fighting relegation at best, more likely in the lower Championship downwards.

Like Steven Caulker, Tommy Carroll, Jake Livermore, Ryan Mason, Cameron Carter-Vickers, To be joined soon by Harry Winks and probably Oliver Skipp.

Why are we developing footballers while others are developing superstars?

Players like Kane is a once in a generation find. The English talent aint so much and we comete with many other clubs for it.
 
said it in other threads, in my lads school team they had 4 lads at local academies these boys trained 3/4 evenings a week, so you would expect them to shine out when they play in the school team, yet they looked little better than the lads that played Saturday football for local teams training 1 night a week
 
The production line itself is not the problem. The problem is as others have pointed out that there is a lack of direction from the academy from the first team. We lack a sporting director that can keep track of the youth players and decide when they are to start training with the first team. Right now the youth players are at the mercy of the manager, who doesn't realistically have the time to track both youth practices and first team practices.
 
Players like Kane is a once in a generation find. The English talent aint so much and we comete with many other clubs for it.
I would agree with this...there seems to be this belief that the rest of the PL is producing star players and Spurs haven't. This isn't meant as a shot (ours is so much worse) but look at the English national team. There's not a ton of established talent developed in English academies. It's mostly guys like Alexander-Arnold and Hudson-Odoi that have maybe meaningful club appearances and are dazzling with their potential. But we've seen plenty of glittering young english footballers who never actually realize that potential. Woolwich used to specialize in those players.

Spurs' academy has produced some quality...just not easy to do consistently, you're at the mercy of fortune largely.
 
It pains me to see it and to say it. Liverpool, Chelsea, Woolwich, Leicester - all bringing in youngsters from their academy who seem very quickly to be up to the task

Why are we developing footballers while others are developing superstars?

Just who are these superstars you are talking about at these clubs?

What constitutes a “superstar” in your mind?

And you do realise Harry Winks is a full England international? The pinnacle of professional football.
 
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