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Spurs Youth - 2019/20

WiganSpur

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
15,974
32,682
the re-signing of vorm is yet another example of how baffling the approach to our academy has become.

now let me get this out of the way first, no i wouldn't feel particularly confident if whiteman or austin found themselves in goal for the first team but this isn't the point. clearly poch feels the same given we've had to resort to bringing vorm back but the two issues i have with this are a) why aren't we letting them go out on loan if that's the case??? and b) how on earth are they ever going to prove whether they can be relied upon if at the first sign of trouble all you're going to do is shit your pants and re-sign a player you've just let go? what's going to change in whiteman/austin's game from now and next year? or the year after? or the year after that if all they're doing is training and not being allowed to prove themselves capable or not somewhere else? we don't want to loan them but we don't want to play them either so is the plan to just keep them until they're mid 20s and then release them?

does john mcdermott not have a say in any of this or has he just become pochettino's yes man?
You've got a point but re. Vorm but things are not that simple. We would have probably been paying him £40k a week to be the third choice keeper. We might well have offered him an extension for a lower wage but maybe he turned it down because A. he doesn't want to be third choice, and B. he might get a better contract with another club.

Now of course the circumstances are a lot different. Lloris is injured and Vorm hasn't yet found a new club to his liking. The point is, he still could have been rated more highly than the youth keepers, but not to the extent of £40k a week. Maybe it was just a case of 'we'll cross that bridge when we come to it' with the 3rd choice, and if Whiteman/Austin are better than the free agent options, then we stick with them.

Now i'm critical of our approach to youth but this could still have a perfectly reasonable explanation other than Poch bottling the youth players.
 

Ron Burgundy

SC Supporter
Jun 19, 2008
7,705
23,267
Anyone else worried about our youth system vs. others? Why are our best players leaving, for instance?

Don't get me wrong, we've had a few good players come through, and everyone suffers from it to an extent, but we seem to have lost our best youth players (Kirby etc.), have no where near the quality or quantity that our neighbours have and don't seem to be snapping up (Parrott aside) good young players from elsewhere.

I'm not sure the right focus is being placed on it and I'm not sure where the issue is
 

chaching

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
602
1,433
all the chelsea lads making their way into the first team at the moment have been there since they were like 6, 7, 8. they do get first "dibs" on kids even at that age because of what they can offer them but it's still the coaching they've received over the following 10+ years that has seen them get to the level they're currently at.

i do think we neglect the physical aspect a bit compared to other clubs though and in general ours are always small/late developers in comparison. arsenal are producing players with a better blend of attributes at the moment as well unfortunately, they've had a baron run over recent years but they're now bringing through some players of real quality. we do still have a few of our own but not as many as the clubs around us and even ones like parrott and bennett are fairly recent recruits, rather than having come all the way through the system.
This is going back about 5-7 years ago when my son was that age, so I don't know if it is still true but then Chelsea had a partnership with my sons football club in north Essex. at least every other month they would take coaches to his football club to take training. the worst ratio of kids to coaches was 4 to 1. Usually it was 3 to 1. They were excellent with the kids giving them all individual tips on how they can improve no matter if they were the best or the worst player there. They then offered trials to the better ones.

Around the same time Spurs had a training session in the sports centre near us where they advertised these great coaches and scouts and management might be there. If I remember rightly it cost £15-£20 there were hundreds of kids and 3 coaches who were just shouting what they were doing. not once did they try and correct or help any kid. In fact when they were playing little games right in front of one of the coaches a player made an absolutely horrible tackle on another kid. I could see the coach saw it and he still didn't say anything. I went away that evening absolutely disappointed with the club.
 

coys200

Well-Known Member
May 22, 2017
8,436
17,403
This is all a bit hypothesis but were players like Abraham Mount 8/10 yrs old when they joined Chelsea ? There’s definitely an element of luck but also attracting the very best potential at at 8/10 yrs old. We’ve only really been regarded as a top top club in last 4/5 years. With Kane emergence I’m sure that’s helped a bit as well and perception of Pochettino. As said this is just hypothesis but I’d guess the quality of our 8/10 yr olds has risen in last 4/5 years. Obviously we won’t start to see the effect of that for maybe another 5 years.
 

therhinospeaks

Well-Known Member
Dec 18, 2014
667
818
Biggest change in our academy over the last ten years is the drop off in physicality. And even the smaller ones were tenacious.
 

ljinko888

Well-Known Member
May 17, 2016
2,080
5,376
I think with goalkeepers it's interesting to note the starting point of the most recent England number one's.

Joe Hart came through the Shrewsbury academy and played 58 times by the age of 19 before joining Manchester City. He had a couple of short loans after but didn't take long to break into the City team. Then when they got bought by the Sheikh the new management wanted the experience of Shay Given so Hart was sent to Birmingham for a year where he excelled (and should have made the England squad in 2010).

Ben Foster was playing in a regional league through his youth but Stoke City spotted him at age 18 and gave him a contract - so technically he was not brought up in a professional academy. He didn't play a Football League game until the age of 21. He never played a game for Stoke because Alex Ferguson turned up to watch his son Darren's team play against Wrexham who had Foster on loan and immediately signed Foster afterwards. Then Foster was loaned by United to Watford for two consecutive seasons where he played 81 games to help Watford - getting them promoted to the Premier League in year one and the following year when they went straight back down.

Fraser Forster was 21 when he played his first ever professional game because he was stuck in Newcastle's academy. He did well at Norwich on loan in League One for a season, joined Celtic on loan then joined Celtic permanently where he became a cult hero. He never played in the Premier League until the age of 26.

Tom Heaton came through the Manchester United academy. Never played a game for them. Pretty much spent his entire twenties playing in the Championship but now has proven himself in the last few years as one of the most consistent goalkeepers in the Premier League.

Jack Butland came through the Birmingham academy. Moved on loan to Cheltenham at the age of 18 in League Two where he played 24 games. Played every game for Birmingham in the Championship the following season and was in the England squad for Euro 2012 despite never playing in the Premier League. Stoke signed him off the back of that where he spent the next two years spending half the season warming the bench and the other half back in the Championship on loan. Finally played regular Premier League football by age 22 by which he had about 100 games in the lower leagues. Strangely still stuck at Stoke in the Championship now after being relegated two seasons ago.

Jordan Pickford was a Sunderland academy product but played 121 games through the Conference to the Championship before making his Sunderland (and Premier League) debut just short of his 22nd birthday - against us in a 4-1 win for Spurs.

All but one of the players came through a big club academy. And the one who did never played for that club and left a decade ago. They all gained experience playing in the lower divisions. The fact that Stoke never played Foster and Newcastle never played Forster despite being a Championship team is emblematic of the problem with English goalkeepers in that English football overvalues seniority in that position. Nevertheless they all worked their up to the top.

It's actually pretty shameful that for all the hype of elite academies and coaching that a goalkeeper worthy of playing for England can't be found out at Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool and Man City.

Angus Gunn and Dean Henderson are probably the best bets but they had to go on loans to get where they are now. The loans policy of ours has been covered plenty of times and we are wasting the time of lots of players who aren't going to get a look in staying here but should be playing elsewhere.
 

Ron Burgundy

SC Supporter
Jun 19, 2008
7,705
23,267
This is all a bit hypothesis but were players like Abraham Mount 8/10 yrs old when they joined Chelsea ? There’s definitely an element of luck but also attracting the very best potential at at 8/10 yrs old. We’ve only really been regarded as a top top club in last 4/5 years. With Kane emergence I’m sure that’s helped a bit as well and perception of Pochettino. As said this is just hypothesis but I’d guess the quality of our 8/10 yr olds has risen in last 4/5 years. Obviously we won’t start to see the effect of that for maybe another 5 years.

I'm not sure the Poch factor has helped at all actually. I'm slightly surprised frankly, but how many good young players have we attracted recently?
 

coys200

Well-Known Member
May 22, 2017
8,436
17,403
I'm not sure the Poch factor has helped at all actually. I'm slightly surprised frankly, but how many good young players have we attracted recently?



I think the myth is stronger than the fact. I’m not really aware of all the intricate why a parent would chose a club for a kid at 8 years old. But as a layman from the outside there don’t seem many more attractive options in last 3 or 4 years in London even all UK.
 

beats1

Well-Known Member
Feb 22, 2010
30,006
29,551
Its funny there have been problems with the academy for a long time but people have been saying the youth watchers are just negative

Now the first team, isn't playing well and all of sudden questions are being asked of the academy but the academy literally went down the shitter years ago, despite the new facilities

We are a mediocre academy imo, people saying lets get some players out of the academy for the first team, my question is who?

The main reason Parrett has been fast tracked is due to us not having another striker

If Poch's leaves, his effect on our academy would have been piss poor. He hasn't changed the philosophy to match his or vice versa and instead building a wall for graduates of the academy, in both furthering themselves or us

One word to describe poch's term in charge of the academy is stalemate.
 

Locotoro

Prince of Zamunda
Sep 2, 2004
9,328
13,927
the re-signing of vorm is yet another example of how baffling the approach to our academy has become.

now let me get this out of the way first, no i wouldn't feel particularly confident if whiteman or austin found themselves in goal for the first team but this isn't the point. clearly poch feels the same given we've had to resort to bringing vorm back but the two issues i have with this are a) why aren't we letting them go out on loan if that's the case??? and b) how on earth are they ever going to prove whether they can be relied upon if at the first sign of trouble all you're going to do is shit your pants and re-sign a player you've just let go? what's going to change in whiteman/austin's game from now and next year? or the year after? or the year after that if all they're doing is training and not being allowed to prove themselves capable or not somewhere else? we don't want to loan them but we don't want to play them either so is the plan to just keep them until they're mid 20s and then release them?

does john mcdermott not have a say in any of this or has he just become pochettino's yes man?

I suspect that Vorm was brought back as much for his positive effect on the squad as his footballing ability.

But my question is "Did Whiteman or Austin get any loan offers for us to consider?"
 

spursfan77

Well-Known Member
Aug 13, 2005
46,680
104,957
the re-signing of vorm is yet another example of how baffling the approach to our academy has become.

now let me get this out of the way first, no i wouldn't feel particularly confident if whiteman or austin found themselves in goal for the first team but this isn't the point. clearly poch feels the same given we've had to resort to bringing vorm back but the two issues i have with this are a) why aren't we letting them go out on loan if that's the case??? and b) how on earth are they ever going to prove whether they can be relied upon if at the first sign of trouble all you're going to do is shit your pants and re-sign a player you've just let go? what's going to change in whiteman/austin's game from now and next year? or the year after? or the year after that if all they're doing is training and not being allowed to prove themselves capable or not somewhere else? we don't want to loan them but we don't want to play them either so is the plan to just keep them until they're mid 20s and then release them?

does john mcdermott not have a say in any of this or has he just become pochettino's yes man?

The loaning and development of our players has been terrible since Sherwood left. We haven't replaced him.
 

@Bobby__Lucky

Well-Known Member
Aug 20, 2013
2,933
3,982
Don't get this negativity around KWP. He started the season very strongly and was one of our better players both physically and technically before his injury.
 
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