- Mar 7, 2005
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- #21
Our youth signings and those involved certainly have been impressive. I think David Pleat deserves alot of the credit as well. He is the one who really insticated our youth policy, but gets little credit and mostly criticism from Spurs fans. You can't go straight from being a bottom half of the table team, to signing some of the best young players in the world. It's been a long and gradual process and the roots of which firmly sit with David Pleat. He was the one who brought in the likes of Gardener, Doherty, Davies, Ferguson and Etherington. People may say they weren't good, but at the time we couldn't get the best, but these signings mark a turining point in our history. He also tried to sign Rooney (or so he claims). Peter Reid said we first went for Lennon when Pleat was in charge and George Burley said that we'd been after Huddlestone from the moment he made his debut. Gradually over time we've moved forward as a club and can now attract the best youngsters, but it was Pleat who saw the best way forward for the club was to invest in the future and he started this, before the likes of DL, DC, JR of FA were at the club.
You're right in a sense, but all you're really saying is that we had a youth policy b4 Ramos, as we did before Pleat and as we have since almost day 1. Every club has a youth policy, always has and always will do, it's the efficacy of our youth policy that I'm talking about, the professional approach, the knowledge of the game world-wide, having an integrated strategy from first team down to the minis, it's about throwing money at it, employing the best people to get the job done etc etc and imo we've seen a step change since DL took over. He introduced the DoF/head-coach European style system he appointed Arnesen when he thought he'd take us further than Pleat and got Comolli in when Arnesen bailed ship, he appointed Jol and then Ramos and the seeds he planted are starting to bear fruit.
What I wrote served two purposes, one to say well done and give a bit of credit, the other to ask of the management's critics, are you having a change of heart? Given your previous on this issue and given that you're a thinker your response comes across as grudging.