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The youth players/on-loan thread 2015-16

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I think things have changed

Prior to 2004 - both academy and reserves were a laughing stock
2004-2009 - McDermott and Inglethorpe created a superb academy setup, but Clive Allen's reserves were horrific
2009-2014 - players went from the excellent academy out on loan. This benefitted some (Townsend clocking up 100 appearance), but harmed other (Mason had a series of inappropriate ones and picked up a lot of injuries)
2015-onwards - hopefully a more direct link from academy to first team squad, as seen with Onomah, Winks and McGee

Re Mason - he was always the most talented one of that class of 2009 (this article about him and the youth setup is fantastic: https://bankruptspurs.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/last-season-was-the-greatest-ive-known-as-a-spurs-fan/), but injuries held him back. I said a general rule, and had cases like Mason's in mind as the exceptions.

I disagree a little here. I think pretty much all of our loanees (including Mason) have benefitted from playing proper football where the difference between winning and losing is sometimes the difference in a player being able to pay his mortgage or not. I think Onomah looks to be a player who would benefit from playing with a bunch of teammates in this scenario as it may help to cut out his tendency to coast through games (as I feel he does currently)

Going out on loan is also of real benefit to the players in the case where they end up being deemed not quite good enough for Spurs, it gets them some exposure, allows lower league scouts to see how they cope at that level and opens up opportunities for them to still have a career in football when Spurs release them.

Additionally I don't think that Mason got "inappropriate" loans, it was just that he had a period of injuries with those injuries always occurring at inopportune moments, this just being bad luck really as opposed to being specifically caused by the loans.

I caught up with Mickey Hazard a while back (it was Mickey who took Mason to Spurs) and Mickey said that Ryan's injury problems perhaps came because he was doing a little too much gym work in an effort to become bigger/stronger as he knew that he was a little too weak on the ball. However it ended up that Ryan was just a bit of a late developer in terms of his natural strength.

I think it would be churlish of us not to carry on looking to get as many of our talented youngsters as possible good loan moves. The difference between youth football and PL football is absolutely HUGE and the under 21 football is of a very low intensity. There is the odd player who will be able to go straight from youth/under 21 football to the first team squad, but these players really are few and far between. My thoughts are that it is much better for a players development to be playing proper competitive football between the ages of (say) 18 and 22. I'm not sure that (for example) Dele Ali would be as good as he is now if he was playing under 19/21 football instead of having those couple of seasons playing for MK Dons.

I would be disappointed if the likes of Winks and Onomah (as well as CCV and KWP) are not loaned out in the January Window. Their opportunities to play for us are likely to diminish as (hopefully) we go further in the Cup competitions and I think they need to be playing competitive football to continue to progress.

The only one of our talented youngsters that I think we have to be very careful about loaning out is Marcus Edwards.
 
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Wigan have been boosted, however, by the return of on-loan Tottenham forward Shaq Coulthirst, who had been having treatment on a thigh injury back at Spurs.

Coulthirst, 20, featured twice for Wigan in August before picking up the injury and Caldwell said: "He's back now to work with our medical team and he's hopefully a week or two weeks away from full training.

"His attitude has been brilliant, we've kept contact with him, and he's been excited to come back and start working with us again."

http://www.sportinglife.com/football/news/article/165/10001301/
 
The Spurs TV hosts / commentators are fudging horrible by the way. Some of them have really boring voices.
 
F*ck this ****. I assume the youth-team coach at least played his first team?

For the most part, yes, though the two stars of the team got the three goals so that's important. We need to find a consistent backline as we seem to be chopping and changing every match so that doesn't help.
 
Could this be the same as Ceballos? Wasn't part of the reason he didn't play because the contract talks didnt happen?
 
Could this be the same as Ceballos? Wasn't part of the reason he didn't play because the contract talks didnt happen?

Yeah pretty much, though Veljkovic is better than Ceballos so this is harder to take.

Poch doesn't fancy him, no? Still unsure why.

Not sure, maybe he doesn't think he's mobile enough but then he's quicker than Fazio for instance so who knows.
 
Yeah pretty much, though Veljkovic is better than Ceballos so this is harder to take.



Not sure, maybe he doesn't think he's mobile enough but then he's quicker than Fazio for instance so who knows.

Languid playing style, perhaps? Is he any less of a presser than, say, Mason or Dier?
 
Languid playing style, perhaps? Is he any less of a presser than, say, Mason or Dier?

Yeah he's not really like those players, he's not outwardly aggressive, doesn't fly around the pitch diving into tackles etc. His qualities are tactical, mental and technical rather than physical, he plays more like a veteran than a kid. I still prefer him as a CB but can see why others like him as a DM as he's comfortable on the ball and has a nice passing range.
 
Yeah he's not really like those players, he's not outwardly aggressive, doesn't fly around the pitch diving into tackles etc. His qualities are tactical, mental and technical rather than physical, he plays more like a veteran than a kid. I still prefer him as a CB but can see why others like him as a DM as he's comfortable on the ball and has a nice passing range.

Those are qualities that (correct me if I'm mistaken) are far harder to find in a young lad than just physicality or work-rate. We shouldn't be letting this lad go, imo. Even if Poch doesn't fancy him, he's surely worth a place as rotation for Dier?
 
Those are qualities that (correct me if I'm mistaken) are far harder to find in a young lad than just physicality or work-rate. We shouldn't be letting this lad go, imo. Even if Poch doesn't fancy him, he's surely worth a place as rotation for Dier?

You're right, he's not a typical raw/green/naive/whatever word you want to use young player. He's very composed, nothing seems to fluster him, not overly eye-catching, just quiety goes about his job with little fuss. I don't see why he couldn't have been used against Qarabag the other week for example, there would've been little to lose but a lot to gain potentially, instead though we'll probably never see him for Spurs and will just have to hope he doesn't end up going on to become a player we regret letting go. We've already lost Azzaoui this summer who was another talented kid, though that was very much out of the club's hands so not a lot we could have reasonably done.
 
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