The Spurs Youth Thread - 2017/2018

IGSpur said:

I definitley get what you mean but do you not think he'd be able to function in a 4141 in one of the 2 behind the striker?I think he'd be able to play there to a very good standard. I agree he isn't your traditional no.10 and I think he is a lot better as a CM but I think he could do well there

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agrdavidsfan said:

Apparently us and arsenal & Liverpool are after Liam Cullen at Swansea

This came directly from someone at Swansea.

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WindyCOYS said:

It's been a really interesting week of debate on here, and I generally have found myself in agreement with @IGSpur and @Blake Griffin. I've debated whether to bother posting anything on my blog or not as people in less-informed circles than this fantastic thread basically tend to give it the whole 'you just love youth players' response. But I wanted to articulate something because I think this area is one of Pochettino's very few failings so far at Spurs. Our squad is small but he could have made it a lot deeper by integrating more youngsters by this point.

Also, selfishly, it's quite useful to benchmark how I feel at this point in time and then to look again in 6-12 months to see how things have moved on.

http://windycoys.com/2017/12/when-does-spurs-young-talent-get-a-chance/

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Bus-Conductor said:

2-0 up in a dead rubber, with 25 minutes to go, Son goes off and instead of bringing on Amos (or even Sterling) we get fucking Dembele.

The footballing equivalent of (Poch) stuffing a boulder (Dembele) in the puppy (academy player) sack and throwing it in the river.

Seriously?

It’s a free hit Pochettino FFS. Not one new face started? KWP gets 20 minutes at LB (and looks better than Rose or Aurier tonight), Sterling gets three minutes. Amos gets fucking knish.

How many chances a year do we get to play senior games with absolutely nothing to lose?

How many chances to get real game time into young players.

Pleased Nkoudou was given a start but did Alli need another game ? Did Aurier and Sissoko need to play against opposition of this Quality ? Did we need to risk Winks?

Edwards, Shashoua and maybe even Skipp should have been around this squad or team.

Even City started a couple of kids including handing a debut to Foden, same age as Edwards.

Ok game, decent goals.

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Bus-Conductor said:

Firstly, you have no idea if we would have lost the game with KWP and another kid in there - but on the evidence of all those types of scenarios, the quality of opposition, and the fact that last year we lost CL games without kids, I would say it's pretty doubtful. Secondly, so what ? there was absolutely nothing riding on that game. And please don't tell me we would have got a morale boost or something, because beating Real Madrid and Dortmund away were both followed by pretty lacklustre performances.

What we could have gained was some very vital first team experience, we could have learnt something about some very promising players that could have actually gone some way to helping us short, medium or long term solve some squad deficiencies, in the coming months provided some new options, some fresh legs and minds, some vim and importantly competition, which we are dreadfully lacking right now and one of the reasons we have been in a complacent funk.

I am not saying this because these are academy players, I am saying it because they are promising players that are already part of our club and could be made much better use of.

How could Amos or Skipp be worse than Sissoko as a CM ? How could risking our current only decent "8" on a completely meaningless game be clever ? How is running Alli, a kid himself, into the ground on meaningless games a clever use of resources ?

I love having Pochettino as our coach. But don't tell me he's beyond criticism. Or that he's always right. He makes mistakes all the time, just like most coaches.

And that last night was a complete fiasco in terms of intelligent management and development of resources.

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Trix said:

So what?

As has been said before, it's not about age it's about physical and mental maturity. Age is irrelevant.

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Bus-Conductor said:

Hopefully, one day Marcus Edwards will be as mentally mature as Danny Rose, and Serge Aurier.

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Bus-Conductor said:

Would the "kids" have done anything as stupid or reckless as Rose and Aurier, who both should have been sent off?

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Trix said:

As you very well know, I have commented before on stuff I have heard regarding Edwards, and it from what I have heard, and repeatedly posted has always been a physical issue. Well done for ignoring that side though.

Also as far as being mentally mature enough, it's not only about coping with what is happening on the pitch, but also with the press social media etc when there is a fall out for any reason. Now I'm not saying Edwards would have an issue in this regard, but it is something that needs to be considered. Could he play and have a stinker and bounce back from a barrage of negatives from the press and social media? As we know both Aurier and Rose have proved in the past that they can, despite being spoilt twats at times both on and off the pitch.

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Bus-Conductor said:

I’m not really sure they have proved that. Rose is still giving off sounbites and Aurier’s only a few games into a new club after royally stinking out his old one.

And both have been erratic on the pitch. Both could have been sent off on Wednesday, Aurier already has been once this season.

I appreciate you were not necessarily talking about Edwards when talking about mentality, I was more using your comment about mentality to make a general point.

I just think this whole mentality thing is a bit of a misnomer. I understand that players are humans and they all have various mental make ups, some are more mentally robust than others, but this notion espoused by some that all these kids are emotionally fragile and will be damaged beyond repair with one bad outing is really not very viable.

If we don't think a kid has the right mentality then surely we wouldn't even consider moving him up through the grades and eventually to be with the first team squad. And once we have moved them all the way through this process, the only way we are ever going to find out if they truly have the type of mentality to function in the first team, in front of 40-50k people plus, is to actually test it.

I also don’t understand the different standards applied to rationlising selection and performance tolerances for developed players and purchased ones.

We seem to tolerate every kind of deficiency from laziness, technical deficiency, lack of composure, lack of tactical awareness and general footballing intelligence in purchased players but expect developed players to arrive into the first team as complete and any deficiencies mean “they are not ready”.

We get Onomah coming in out of position looking a bit erratic “clearly not ready”, Sissoko plays like Rhinoceros on PCP and he’s “having a blinder”.

We’ve seen the same double standard with KWP/Aurier.

If KWP had played as erratically as Aurier we’d be getting “clearly miles from ready”. But the general concensus is, with some justification, he deserves time to bed in, but why was that not the general consensus with KWP, especially from our head coach?

I said at the start of the season, I would have rather persevered with KWP, not because he’s an academy player, but because I think given the same time to bed in, he could well prove to be the better player.

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Bus-Conductor said:

The outcry could be because we have good players available to us at a time when our team is looking mentally and physically fatigued, performances both collectively and individually are suffering, we have injuries and suspensions and we are not going to solve many, or even any of these issues using the transfer market any time soon.

Jouxter posed against this we have 3 or 4 development players who are at or close to the stage of being ready to begin taking the next step in there development, a step which in some cases could possibly help counter, relieve or even solve some of the aforementioned problems.

They could provide relief, fresh minds and legs and, at best, competition - for free let’s not forget, no heavy transfer or wage risk - to an overworked and in some cases, out of sorts squad.

We did exactly the same a couple of years ago, wasted Pritchard completely whilst running Eriksen into the ground.

Pochettino failed to use Onomah repeatedly when he had chances to do so, now we have one viable “8” type, (Winks) and his development was delayed by the same reluctance to play young players.

If Poch had developed and integrated Onomah better we could have saved the 30m we spunked on Sissoko and bought someone like Tolisso instead, who would have been a quantum improvement to play the 8 role Sissoko is now stampeding to death.

Continuing to persevere with KWP would have meant we could have instead done the deal Liverpool ended up doing for Keita for example.

We are wasting valuable opportunities to evolve through poor management of existing resources.

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Blake Griffin said:

at a push, maybe. would depend on who the other two cms are i guess. if it was dier/wanyama and winks/dembele then no as josh would be expected to be the most attacking of the three and i think that's when his game starts to come undone. if it was one of those four and eriksen or dele then maybe but really i just like him sitting in a two. i get why people suggest playing him in a three as it gives him more protection but watching him play i've always found that he ups his levels off the ball when he has more defensive responsibility.

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Blake Griffin said:

given how good kane has turned out to be it's easy to say he'd have always got to the top but it's not as simple as that.

kane was coming back off his 4th loan and a rather unsuccessful one at leicester where he often couldn't get into the team ahead of david nugent, if ade and soldado had been banging them in then there's a good chance he'd have been let go. now imagine if he'd ended up being sold to say, barnsley. what would that have done for his confidence, his belief, his motivation? ryan mason recently said on sky that kane became a totally different animal when he was starting to get chances with spurs, he said he became obsessed with improving every part of his game and that he was working harder than he'd ever seen him before. would he still have had that same mentality had he been rejected by us and found himself at a middle-of-the-road championship side?

kane is obviously now an amazing player but he still needs other good players around him too, he may have ended up in a struggling team unable to use is quality to full-effect but even if had landed on a decent team and did well in the championship he'd still then have only been picked up by a bottom half prem side. he'd then again have to prove himself over and over in the hope that a bigger team would take a chance on him and he'd probably have had to pass through a mid-upper side first like an everton or a southampton, it would've been a long road back to the top for him and no one knows how he'd have coped with that.​

when talking about players who didn't make it, people only tend to want to hear about them again if they became megastars like say pogba when he left utd but whilst we may not be losing world-beaters, they could have at least been players who'd have contributed to the squad and you'll often find that players who come through at a particular side will perform to a higher level there than they would elsewhere - like the numerous examples under alex ferguson's reign at utd.

pritchard - again, it's easy to say look where he's ended up but I still believe he's a quality player and the only reason he's not yet been able to show it at a higher level is because of injuries. now if we were aware of the issues with his ankle and thought it was always going to be a problem then fair enough but it's still frustrating when people downplay his ability. the comparison for pritchard that I always make is jesse lingard. now pritchard had just come off the back of a very successful loan at brentford where he was one of the best players in the league, lingard on the other hand struggled to get into derby's team. they then played together at the u21 euros(where pritchard did his ankle) and pritchard again far outperformed him and now look where the two have gone since. lingards' an england international and regular for a top prem side whilst pritchard's in the championship, I refuse to accept that i'm now supposed to believe that lingard's just a lot better.

here's a few pritchard highlights i put together of him from last season, yes it's only the championship but anyone can see that he has quality - https://streamable.com/i2wgo

veljkovic - I think it's a little disingenuous and also unfair to use the position of bremen against him. they finished 8th last season for a start but even if they are struggling it's not necessarily a reflection of him as a player. the likes of zaha, barkley, lanzini etc also play for sides near the bottom of the league but a lot of fans want us to sign them. if we're talking about defenders only then last summer players like keane, maguire, mawson and gibson were suggested a lot and they'd have all cost 20m+, I think veljkovic is or could have proven to be as good as any of them and we let him go for what, £500k? i'm not saying he's a player we're going to massively regret letting go but again, he could've been a good, solid option for us.

bentaleb - just as you have said, i'm also a huge fan of him. I watched schalke a lot last season and I didn't see more from goretzka(who is being linked to huge clubs) for example than i saw from nabil. with dembele slowing down I think he'd have been the perfect player to take over, somewhat ironically nabil is also having hip issues at the moment so who knows how that will effect him going forward though. a lot was said about his perceived attitude issues but I never saw him as a bad egg, he just believed in himself and wanted to play, surely we could've done more to keep him?

azzaoui - I was never quite as high on him as most but I still would have liked him to stay, I don't think this one is on the club though. he was only 17 when he left and wasn't going to renew his deal, could we have done more? maybe we could loaned him out on the basis that he was to extend his contract but we always like to keep young players in house so we may not have been willing to do that. think this one was just unfortunate - just as he was as he did his cruciates soon after leaving. he's now on loan at willem in holland and starting to show flashes of his ability, will be interesting to see how he does in the future.

oduwa - I wasn't ever really a fan so for me I wasn't worried at seeing him go. he does have something but he needs a ton of work and he'd never have gotten the time to work through it here but then we have also signed similarly rough-around-the-edges players in njie and nkoduou and I don't think oduwa would have done any less - obviously we were expecting much more from those two players though so that's not really the point.

onomah - similar to bentaleb, I love him and I pray it works out for him but it's just so frustrating when you watch him be so good in one position and then so bad(relatively) in another and it's the latter that he's only ever played in at senior level. it's not even because of the jump between youth and first team football, it's always been the case at every age group he's played in. I saw @IGSpur say the other day that josh could play #10 for us but this is one of those rare occasions that I disagree with him as I just can't stand to see him play anywhere that isn't cm, I really do think he's best operating in deeper areas of the pitch than most realise, even the suggestions of him playing as one of the twin "8s" in our system I think is a bit of a stretch.

it's kind of a relief for me when internationals come around as I know i'll get to see him play in his actual position and nine times out of ten he'll be one of the best players on the pitch. he and winks were due to play alongside each other for the u21s before the latter got a senior call-up, would have been interesting to see them play together as whilst most would expect winks to show he's on a different level I think what probably would have happened is that they'd have looked equally good in their own way. hopefully we get to see for ourselves at some point in the future but I am worried at how it's going for josh at the moment.

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DCSPUR said:

guys, was thinking about comparisons between Josh and Dembele (think made by Josh himself)....didn't MD start higher up the field and then work his way back?

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aussiespursguy said:

Yeah I'm pretty sure he was a forward/striker when he joined Fulham from AZ.

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Bus-Conductor said:

What you've written there pretty much echoes what I've been saying (as have others such as BG and IG) for quite a while and getting quite a bit of shit for it from certain quarters in here. I rate Pochettino as the best coach we've had in my time (this goes back to the seventies) but he's mis-managing some very good resources.

This for example was from Wednesday's match ratings thread:

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DCSPUR said:

wasn't the word that Veljkovic and Azzaoui both were wanted by the club but neither would sign extensions....

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DCSPUR said:

wasn't the word that Veljkovic and Azzaoui both were wanted by the club but neither would sign extensions....

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Blake Griffin said:

veljkovic was 20 and had already been here five years, he could see that he wasn't going to get a chance(or that it would be very difficult to come by) so he looked for a way out, people forget that he actually made two appearances under sherwood so to have had that taste followed by nothing for the next 18 months would have been frustrating for him. people can say that he should've been more patient and believed in poch but it's a lot to ask a player to effectively put their career on hold with no guarantee that they're going to be given the chance to make that final step at the end of it. azzaoui is different, he was 17 and had only been here for a year so i don't blame anyone for what happened there.

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agrdavidsfan said:

How have both Veljkovic and Azzaoui done? Since leaving

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nicdic said:

Oh one other thing. I agree completely that a bunch of our U23s could fill in no problem in the first team. I'd love to see Poche show more balls to do that when we need to keep the team fresh etc.

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Bus-Conductor said:

Doesn’t this post pretty much make redundant the bulk of your argument in your previous post, and agree with what those of us you were criticising (for criticising Poch)?

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allpaths said:

The only real critisim anyone can have of Poch, when it comes to the youth is he doesnt try very hard to fit kids into a matchday squad to give them minutes when he can. To give the a boost and a bit of expierence to show them what level they have to reach on a consistent level.
It's a big shame but not the end of the world. Because more importantly when the player is eventually ready Poch is more than willing to bring them into the first team as a full time professional.

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edson said:

Azzaoui done the right thing for himself he could not turn down a professional contract and a better chance of playing first team football.Even though he was not with us long he was one of my favorite players I have watched over the years and we would have wanted him to stay at the time.

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