the youngsters development has nothing to do with a Emery as they were already in the system and he has benefited from them being ready to join the first team squad. where Emery, and AW before him, fails is in sorting out the defence and the DM. as to Spurs youth team, I thought you had a promising bunch coming through as that was your future - will be hard to replace all those positions without it costing a fortune so you need youth to come through
We did/ do mate but we’ve handled a lot wrong over the last couple years. We’ve kept a lot of our best prospects around the first team but they’ve barely gotten any minutes, to compound matters, we seem to prevent them from playing for the U23s which means they’re getting zero match practice. Walker-Peters, Skipp and now seemingly Tanganga have all been casualties of this. And because of the last couple seasons where opportunities have been limited, we’ve lost four good prospects to teams abroad, one of them being Marcus Edwards who on talent alone is possibly the best we've produced since Kane. He’s the one that scored against you the other week. Reason he didn’t make it here was because of his attitude, if he sorts that then I’d expect to see him in the Prem/ La Liga sooner rather than later.
What DH said above rings very true. A peculiar thing about Poch is that he made his name giving the youngsters a chance, but in the past few seasons that trust seems to have dried up. We also have a distinctly unsuccessful loan strategy which sees multiple players picking up no more than a handful of minutes of playing time across an entire season, while others (e.g. Parrot, Tanganga, Skipp etc.) train with the first team, travel with the match day party but then aren't ultimately in the match day squad (often being unused as the 19th man). Truth be told our youth team set-up has undergone a worrying degree of chopping and changing over the past 2-3 years. Since Ugo's untimely death in all honesty. He had a burgeoning reputation at the club and was hugely respected by the likes of Kane and Winks as a top coach at U21 and U23 level. I had hoped we had begun to sort out the long-term solution to that problem by appointing Scott Parker to U18 duty but that didn't last long as he went off to manage Fulham within a year of arriving. Bottom line is instability at staff level and a largely confused/confusing strategy towards development has left us with barely a handful of genuine prospects.
Inglethorpe's departure to Liverpool seems to have disrupted things, but that was seven years ago. We've appeared to lack direction ever since.
I often worry whether the crop of youngsters Poch 'inherited' when he joined was just a perfect storm, a once-in-a-generation phenomenon never to be repeated again. Similar to United's Class of 92. He benefited enormously from excellent academy work done before his arrival (Mason, Kane, Bentaleb, Townsend), plus certain players coming of age (Rose, Walker) and some really astute signings (Dier, Davies). At some point sooner rather than later, we have to face the painful truth that the past 5 years has produced Harry Winks. That is it. And he is clearly a few rungs off of the standard we really need. I've rarely felt so disillusioned about our highly expensive, 'state-of-the-art' academy and set-up.
I posted an article in (I think) the Academy Watch thread a few weeks back which highlights the issue: so many of our academy prospects' development stops dead once they reach their 19th birthday ...and before somebody suggests that this obviously means we should be loaning players out for a season or two, loans aren't a catch-all for helping players' development considering CCV has spent the last three seasons playing regularly on loan at Championship-level clubs yet he's stagnated while Massimo Luongo was effectively traumatised by having to play McCarthyball on loan at Ipswich that it set him back at least a year in his development
As you and DH have said, Poch built his rep on giving youth a chance, but he seems to have got a “regular “ team/squad and has settled for that rather than refreshing it by continuous improvements - that maybe because of lack of funds or lack of youth players to bring through. If Poch knows he hasn’t the money to buy in established players then he should be getting players as early in their development as possible - this was the Arsenal model under Wenger once we went to the Emirates, get in young and sell once established. Upside it meets the financial commitments but the downside is that it inhibits success.
That's the thing with Poch: he likes to work with a smaller squad as this allows him to curate a group of players who fit into the system he wants to use, rather than the hodgepodge we had in the Comolli or Baldini eras where we were buying players with no consideration for how they would fit into the systems we were using For the most part this worked, certainly in the years 2015-18, as we had a settled squad firing on all cylinders with a group of players who could rotate in and out of the side when required, most obviously Son as a utility forward or Trippier and Davies rotating in and out at full back. The issue is that our attempts at refreshing the squad between 2016-17 had mixed results, as they break down like this Immediate success: Sanchez, Wanyama Developing: Foyth Eventually came good: Sissoko Failing to meet expectations: Aurier Outright failure: Janssen, Nkoudou On the face of it that seems like a decent batting average, but the reality is very different: first of all Wanyama may have been an immediate success but it was a short-term one as injuries have reduced him to a shadow of the player he was in our first season, while Aurier was supposed to be a key component in our system but instead led to the situation we needed someone to prove themselves to be the viable starting RB but instead had Aurier, Trippier and KWP all demonstrating why they're all better off as rotation options for somebody reliable That's the main issue this season: when you have a smaller squad, all it takes is a faulty component and inconvenient injury in the same area and things fall apart - and that's exactly what is happening to us in the attacking third, because Eriksen's the faulty component yet the combination of Lo Celso and now Lamela being injured while Dele is coming back from various injuries means the only options we have is to either persist with the faulty component until it can be replaced or change the system to try and get around it
One issue with the players coming through our academy is so many of them in recent years not just play in the same position, but the exact same role Oliver Skipp, George Marsh and Jamie Bowden are all Scott Parker-type midfielders Tashan Oakley-Boothe and Paris Maghoma are both Moussa Dembele-type midfielders Kaziah Sterling, Rodel Richards and Rayan Clarke are all Jermaine Defoe-type strikers Alfie Whiteman, Brandon Austin, Jonathan De Bie and Joshua Oluwayemi are all goalkeepers The problem with having more than one academy player in the same mold as one another is that all that happens is one of them gets left behind, for example Ryan Mason, Alex Pritchard and Massimo Luongo were all broadly similar when in our academy and all had a few seasons on loan to develop, yet while Mason did graduate to the first team neither Pritchard nor Luongo did On top of that, some prospects clearly get fast-tracked ahead of others, for example Troy Parrott and Oliver Skipp have gone from playing for our U18s last season to training with the first team this season while the likes of Sterling, Roles and Marsh only train with the first team in pre-season before returning to the U23s
I really rate Skipp. I took a friend of mine who supports Southampton to the youth match which was the first trial event at the stadium. He had never seen any of our youth players before and was raving about Skipp...with good reason.
One point nobody has raised is how Poch spent quite a period of time a number of months ago bemoaning the lack of transfer activity. He has worked with essentially the same group of players for 4-5 years. Those players who have been brought in haven't adequately replaced those who have gone or are now on the wane. The average age of the team has increased significantly resulting in a reduction in energy/ intensity and therefore a less effective pressing game. Dembele wasn't replaced quickly enough - and the jury is still out on Ndombele (if he is a straight replacement?). So is the problem Poch or Levy for not heeding Poch's warnings?
When it comes to the long game, it’s Levy. When it comes to week in week out brain farts regardless of wether he has the squad he wants, it’s Poch. He deserves all the stick he is getting for doing stupid things like picking Eriksen every week. Would we be worse off this season due to not picking Eriksen? I think not.
Yeah...almost crashed my car when I heard that this evening Basically saying Eriksen is giving the amount of effort he has always given
