Spurs U21’s, U18’s and other youth news – 2015/16 Edition

Edwards got another 2 today

England down 1-0 against Canada at half-time been pretty much all England though with everything good going through Winks who is the captain. He's been great.

Tottenham Academy‏@thfcacademy
Spurs team: McDermott; Mukena, Dinzeyi, Walkes, Tsaroulla; Stylianides, Roles, Duncan; Tracey, Loft, Bennetts. (v Fortuna Dussellforf)

Tottenham Hotspur‏@SpursOfficial
Keanan Bennetts' goal saw our Academy beat @f95 1-0 this afternoon to reach the semi-finals of the U19 Champions Trophy in Düsseldorf. #COYS

Team: Glover; Mukena, Maghoma, Walkes, Muscatt; Marsh; Duncan, Stylianides, Goddard, Bennetts; Sterling.
5 mins: Red Bull Salzburg take the lead. A set piece is not properly dealt with, a pass is dropped over the top of our centre-backs & their player read it & finished well low.
15 mins: Stylianides did well to win a free-kick right on the edge of the box; Bennetts took one of the worst shots from a free-kick I've seen.

Walkes needs to stop these long 'passes' from the back. Bennetts is not playing well.

I repeat: Walkes needs to stop these long 'passes' from the back. Driving me to distraction the amount of times he has given possession up cheaply.

That was the worst half I've seen from us yet, I think. Game plan completely gone to pot - basically Walkes is just firing a lot of long-balls forward, or the ball goes along the backline to Mukena (not a good right-back), who fails to beat his man and we lose it again.

Goddard has got frustrated and tried to drop deep to create a few times, and each time he has tried to force a pass and has lost it. The only three who have shown any ability so far are Marsh (best player again), Stylianides (I'm warming to him) and Muscatt. Sterling has barely had a kick because there's nothing of any quality coming to him. Duncan is totally wasted on the right, would rather see him central and Goddard pushed wide. But tbh we probably need Roles on behind Sterling if we want to progress.

And with that, Roles is on at HT.

WindyCOYS said:

Team: Glover; Mukena, Maghoma, Walkes, Muscatt; Marsh; Duncan, Stylianides, Goddard, Bennetts; Sterling.
5 mins: Red Bull Salzburg take the lead. A set piece is not properly dealt with, a pass is dropped over the top of our centre-backs & their player read it & finished well low.
15 mins: Stylianides did well to win a free-kick right on the edge of the box; Bennetts took one of the worst shots from a free-kick I've seen.

Walkes needs to stop these long 'passes' from the back. Bennetts is not playing well.

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Those players in that group are not good at all.

Who is in charge, ugo or mckenna?

Romulus said:

Those players in that group are not good at all.

Who is in charge, ugo or mckenna?

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I don't think McKenna is there - think it's McDermott and Wells.

Mukena's cross just now was horrendous! May as well get Tracey on at RB.

42 mins: Tracey on for Mukena at RB. We have still been poor - even Marsh has resorted to hitting long-balls now.

Watched most of the games the thing that stands out for me is the lack of ability to hold the ball up at top,if you are going to play one at top it is important that the lone striker holds the ball up when the ball eventually comes to him and brings other players into the game and all our strikers have not done this for me in any games we have played.

Dinzeyi now on for Bennetts. Spurs have a big chance when Oteh & Sterling force an opening but the keeper made a solid save.

edson said:

Watched most of the games the thing that stands out for me is the lack of ability to hold the ball up at top,if you are going to play one at top it is important that the lone striker holds the ball up when the ball eventually comes to him and brings other players into the game and both strikers have not done this for me in any games we have played.

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Agree, as much as I like Sterling, he has struggled. But the lack of quality in our passing has meant that he and Loft, and Oteh have constantly fed off scraps.

WindyCOYS said:

I repeat: Walkes needs to stop these long 'passes' from the back. Driving me to distraction the amount of times he has given possession up cheaply.

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I've never seen Spurs youth teams playing so many long balls forward from the back, just 'lumping' it as far as possible - so unlike them, they've always tried to play it out to retain possession.

Obviously I don't know how impacted other teams were by international call-ups, but we were without Owens, Whiteman, Edwards, Brown, Tanganga, Shashoua, plus U16s Kirby & Oakley-Booth.

Today's performance was particularly poor - even our most patient players like Marsh were resorting to just lumping it forward. Our best chance came with Sterling and Oteh using sheer brute force to get kind ricochets in the box which led to a shot.

From what I have seen, the stand-out performers for Spurs across tournament so far have been Marsh, Roles & Tsaroulla. Stylianides & Muscatt have done OK too.

Severely unimpressed with a lot of the others, especially those that have dropped down from the Under-21s and should have been the ones leading us on.

wlhatwhl said:

I've never seen Spurs youth teams playing so many long balls forward from the back, just 'lumping' it as far as possible - so unlike them, they've always tried to play it out to retain possession.

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Me either, really disappointing. If I was McDermott/Wells I'd have been livid at the lack of bravery in possession. Walkes and Maghoma should know better coming from U21, Walkes just kept firing aimless balls forward or straight out of play.

Goddard was poor (and has been in most matches), Bennetts kept trying to take on too many players, and to me it seems that Mukena and Oteh are both very lucky to have a scholarship, as neither looks up to it. Bennetts is a strange one as he seems to have all of the physical attributes and has shown glimpses of potential but very rarely actually plays well.

As I said, missing key players. But this will have firmed up a few decisions in terms of who might get cut loose at the end of the season/end of next.

'U19 Champions Trophy - Update': http://windycoys.com/2016/03/u19-champions-trophy-update/

We play Japan Highschool Selection for 3rd place at 13:45 UK time.

Maybe what we are seeing here is similar to the problems we have seen at U21 level much of the season. This tournament team is a melange of various age groups, some of whom haven't played as a collective unit together much, missing the most talented, and certainly 2 or 3 of the most creatively talented (Owens, Whiteman, Edwards, Brown, Tanganga, Shashoua, Kirby & Oakley-Booth). Chucked into a tournament format, abroad in strange surroundings against some decent opposition.

Maybe JM and the coach's will learn more (or at least learn) from stuff like this than they do from easier game situations with all the brighter lights playing.

@WindyCOYS
Glad your warming to Stylianides a little. I think functionaries are much harder to warm to - they rarely dazzle - but teams need them and very good ones who can also play a bit of football are pretty rare. We've ended up playing a 22yo CB as one all this season in the first team. Stylianides first caught my eye in the Asian tournament a year or so ago, it was a horrible tournament against some real tough, physical, dirty teams (inc from South America) on horrible pitches, the football wasn't pretty for most of it, but Stylianides stood up, got stuck in, was calm under pressure and made sensible choices once he'd won the ball. He didn't do anything mesmerising, but he showed a nice combination of character and composure in the maelstrom in CM.

@Blake Griffin (and Walkes comments)
I think we've all questioned Ehiogu's positional selection choices this year (and the way his teams have played - whether because of those selections or not) but earlier in this thread I mooted how much we blame Ehiogu for the odd positional selections and how much these decisions may be taken by committee with people like JM with a view to developing and testing individuals and in light of JM's talk recently (where he spoke of this facet and wanting this to be prioritised over results), maybe we have to review some of those opinions?

That doesn't mean I think Ehiogu is great, and JM himself has raised the issue of the current quality of coaches we have and have lost. Just that it's hard to judge at the moment when we aren't often seeing talented, settled development teams at their collective best for various reasons.

I think that JM/Inglethorpe/Ramsey coached Carroll, Bentaleb, Veljkovic, Pritchard, Smith, Kane group that all kind of developed and largely played together has become a yardstick by which we (or I know I have) judged other development teams - and what have seen lately is individuals developing at different rates, being moved up at different rates, loaned, off on international duty etc. Maybe there is an element of some of the collective performances suffering from the academy's own success, mixed in of course with the loss of 3 or 4 really good coaches and maybe a whole bunch of re-structuring that that has entailed and the academy and JM trying to re-jig slightly to Poch's instructions ??

Romulus said:

Those players in that group are not good at all.

Who is in charge, ugo or mckenna?

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Lots of players away on internationals. The 19 players in the competition squad are all the most senior players who are fit, eligible and available to go to the competition (except Harrison and Amos for who u19 competitions should be behind them)

Only other option would have been to include a couple of u16's like Oakley'Boothe to replace one of them, which is a fair comment.

But does emphasise how correct most posters are that we need to 'lose' some of the development squad playing in this competition, as they are not good enough and clogging up the ability of younger ones to play.

WindyCOYS said:

'U19 Champions Trophy - Update': http://windycoys.com/2016/03/u19-champions-trophy-update/

We play Japan Highschool Selection for 3rd place at 13:45 UK time.

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Is there a link we can watch this at?