- Sep 15, 2007
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- #1,241
I am not sure at all that AVB coming in has had a negative impact on the youth players.
The fact is that AVB came in as did several players, with three top players departing, for whatever reason - that is the very definition of a transition period. On top of that we had a lengthy injury list - and of 1st team players. This should be seen in the context of AVB's Chelsea debacle - he was very aware, as has been made abundantly clear in his latest interview, that results couldn't be ignored on the basis that he was working on a long-term project. When seen in this light, is it really any surprise that he didn't just shove in a bunch of youth players that he knew nothing about?
I don't believe this effects the long term at all: DL has placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on the youth set-up and a major increase in the value and quantity of the youth product - in terms of time, effort and, most importantly (from DL's perspective ), money, into this. I really can't see him not having discussed it at length with AVB. And I really don't believe AVB has zero interest in promoting from the youth just because he was patently aware of the immediacy of results. I will ask again, exactly how much would he have known of these youth players at the start of the season? His first task, surely, would have been to get to know his 1st team squad. And with so many 1st team players out injured, surely, he would have needed to have maximised every little of experience and ability from those that remained - not push a bunch of inexperienced kids, that he hardly knew, to the fore. Even in cup games, if he is trying to inculcate a winning mentality into the club, surely the last thing he (or anyone else, for that matter) would have wanted to do was chuck some kids in, at very serious risk of elimination, maintain the mythos of inconsistency and exciting nearly men, or run the serious risk of harming the kids' development (any one, or all). It is one of the things 'Arry did very well - with the whole BS of the curse of Gareth Bale hanging around, he waited until we had a game sewn up, and beyond throwing away, before giving the lad his run-out - rather than chucking him into a United at OT maelstrom for his first appearance under a new manager, which could have been a disaster.
All we know, at the moment, is that there is a possible issue with the Pritch (who many of us see as one of our hottest prospects). But that could have arisen anyway. We have no knowledge that Aitch would have fast tracked him. Fast tracking him may be a disaster, in any case. Maybe they are seeing things in training that disagree with his opinion of his development ATM - he would hardly be the first young player to believe he was ready when he wasn't. Maybe his head has been turned - maybe it was turned by all the talk of Real and Barca.
I am as excited as anyone by the changes in our youth set-up, and by the young players we have coming through (who I see as the first fruits of those changes, and, hopefully, not a one-off). And I am as much aware of the Pritch's ability at the level he is playing at at the moment. But I do think there is a lot of second guessing going on here, and a fair bit of trying to read the situation without putting it in its proper context.
Carry on, regardless
Very diificult to disagree with anything in this post.
However its also true that if we do not play the youth (and here we are talkimng of 19/20/21 year olds) many of whom have 30+ professional games under their belt (Townsend has about 100) in some first team ganmes then they will not break into the first team - and that means those players will eventually leave as they are seen to have no future at Spurs.
If that happens, although Spurs can say, justifiuablly, that they have a great youth set up, the fact that they have not sorted out how to get players from the youth set up into the first team means that Spurs will not be reaching much benefiit - at best selling the players for £500k, £ 1m or relatively low sums to other clubs. And that would certainly be a shame.
In this thread previously I have suggested that Spurs do what they advocated when they supported the increase in the numbver of substitutes from 5 to 7 and use those extra places (or at least one) for youth players in most matches. That way there are 16 or 17 first team players in the squad for AVB to use and one or two younger ones who AVB can use as he pleases - for example if Spurs are comfortably ahead in some matches. So far this season, its often been the case (partly becaiuse Jenas, Gomes and Bentley are in the 25 man squad but unused) that with injuries AVB has had to put almost all the fit first team players into the match day squad of 18 - and thereby having to play first team players out of position when brought from the bench as there have not been suitable choices.
Shoehorning the likes of Sigurdsson into a winger position because of injuries, rather than having Falque or Townsend has not been a particularly great alternative.
If AVB has felt very constrained by his Chelsea past, hopefully being in the top 4 after Christmas (and thereby confounding any critics he may have) will allow him to be sllightly mlore flexible in his views and involve more of the miriad of 19/20/21 year olds.
If he doesn't at least ensure that there are a lot of good quality loan deals in place to develop the youngsters (and hopefully learning from the poor loan choices of Luongo and Fredericks in the first half of the season).