SN Blog 87 – Is KWP an academy success story?

A little bit of boring information about me.  I have been a Tottenham fan all my life but was born in 1983 so my first team I really felt was my team was the 1990/91 team and after that was hooked.  Any Spurs fan who has been around longer or at the same time will laugh at that simply because the 90’s and early 00’s were not a good time to be a Tottenham fan really.  However I stayed fully invested into adulthood but at some stage I started to really feel a disconnect between the team and myself.  We seemed to have players who cared not for the shirt, just the pay check and although that could be unfair on many that is how I felt.

Rather than leave Tottenham and football completely I at this stage got quite interested in following the academy team.  Here was a group of players who were playing for the shirt, the desire to be better and represent the club.  It was great, it was what I wanted to see.  I went to watch as many as I could and made some good friends along the way but geography and work meant I got to go to fewer and fewer but it was the academy games I was following now and the players too.

Now I am no expert.  I am no scout.  I famously nudged by older brother once and told him Lee Barnard was going to get us 20+ goals a season.  I have tried to claim on a few occasions I got him confused with Kane but I didnt…. whenever I watched Kane at first he seemed like a league two clogger – however what I will say is of all the players I watched he changed the most.  Be it development loans of his attitude and thinking, perhaps just pure hard work I do not know but from one game to the next you could see him getting faster, fitter, sharper, more clinical.  Seeing players like that is kind of addictive in a way as you feel an attachment to them and as such when Pochettino brought a group of them into the first team I was suddenly back and invested in first team football again.

Kane is the obvious example but for me Ryan Mason was my guy.  I watched him play so many times and he kindly even said hello after a few games stopping briefly to acknowledge me and a hardened group of lunatics who had stood in the pouring rain to watch an academy game.  Ryan was everything I wanted to see in an academy graduate.  He loved the club, for him having his name on the back of the Tottenham shirt in a first team game was everything and he gave everything every time he was given the chance.

Bentaleb, Kane, Mason, Townsend, Carroll & Caulker.  I watched this group come through at roughly the same time; with a few others that never made it into the Tottenham first team at all but all have gone on to be professionals in league football and even a couple then making it to the Premier league like Bournemouth full back Adam Smith.  (funny story, in the game against Bournemouth recently poor lad took a nasty knock, Kane having known him for years went over to him and it was picked up on the mic; “Dont worry Smithy, you’re still ugly!”  That group from the academy have a special bond).

This blog is not aimed at boring you to tears honest.  The reason for that at the beginning is just some context.  Having watched that group come through and all in their way make it as professionals it was interesting to me to see what the next class would provide so to speak.  In it you had some real talent in the likes of Harry Winks, Josh Onomah and Kyle Walker-Peters being the stand outs with a slightly younger lad called Marcus Edwards getting the headlines.

Now we all know Winks is an established member of the first team squad now and its been well documented the path Edwards took.  He is now playing in Portugal following a free transfer from us as he failed to live up to the standards set by our then manager Mauricio Pochettino, in terms of behaviour and professionalism anyway.  He is doing great and showing the kind of form that got him dubbed “mini Messi” during his time in our U23’s but he has moved on, so should we.  Worth noting he left us on a free transfer however we have a 50% sell on clause.  I am sure sometime soon, maybe even this summer he will be moving on.  Good luck to him.

Josh Onomah is a player I feel struggled under the weight of fan expectation.  He was a perfect player to slot into our squad at a time that we saw Dembele and others start to tire and slow down.  Sadly it just never really worked for him and he had to push for a loan move which eventually led to him leaving on a permanent deal.

I would like to make it clear I am a big fan of what Pochettino did for our club and I honestly still feel he should have been backed and if he had we would be in a very different place right now BUT one thing I believe he got terribly wrong and something I believe he needs to re-think going forward is how he treated academy players.

When Poch first arrived he had a squad full of mercenaries who didnt want to fight, he had an academy team however full of fight and so promoting them was an easy decision.  The expectation for Spurs was to be in the Europa places and to maybe try and push the top four but nothing beyond that.  Poch changed that expectation and with that change his willingness to throw in youth vanished.  He said on interview once:  “The level you have to be as a player to break through here now is higher.  When I joined we were challenging for Europa and now we want titles…”

It was a fair point, the team was a LOT better than when he first arrived however what went wrong is that players he rated were kept close to train with him.  He didnt like the idea of talented youngsters going off, training elsewhere and developing bad habits.  What these players missed out on through was football, playing games.  There is no substitute for that and the likes of Onomah and Walker-Peters suffered because of it.

Walker-Peters as we now know has joined Southampton for a fee believed to be in the region of £12m.  Anyone who watched him play at U18 or U23 level for Spurs or for England at U19 / U21 level will tell you this young man SHOULD have become the Tottenham right back in the first team and been there for a decade or more.  He had everything but what he lacked was experience.  To get that you need games.  Spurs should have loaned him out four seasons again, then again and maybe even for a third season giving him 30+ games a year to make mistakes and learn from them – rather than throwing him into the deep end against Barcelona and having a fan base hate on him for making an error.

Kyle will go on to show at Southampton he is already a very good Premier League level full back; if he kicks on from there to show he is even better than that only time will tell but the key thing is he is gone.  We as a club are looking for a right back and have needed one for two seasons at least and yet one of the best right back prospects in the country was in our academy.  This mistake must be learned from.  I hope the club is learning.

So the title of this blog; is Walker-Peters an academy success story?  Well I guess you can say in footballing terms no.  It was a horror show of how to take a great young talent and waste it.  The fact we need a right back as we let him go only highlights the stupidity in our academy development / progression planning.  However from a financial point of view; its a massive win.

The training centre and academy facilities cost the club roughly £50m and here we are selling Walker-Peters for £12m.  In the past we have got £8m for Caulker, similar for Ryan Mason etc etc.  The academy in terms of build cost has paid for itself and the goals scored by Kane leading to European nights, prize monies etc… probably paid for the academy in all costs since the day it opened and will continue to do so for years to come.

So I guess like with many things at Tottenham we are looking at this from a business point of view and a footballing point of view.  As a business the sale of Walker-Peters is excellent.  From a footballing side it shows there are lessons that must be learned and learned fast as our next academy crop are wasting away without competitive games to play.

*Worth noting the club have organised season long loans for TJ Eyoma and Troy Parrott which could indicate a change in policy under Jose, we shall have to wait and see.

 

-SJ

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