But you can’t keep everyone who looks half promising and tbf to the players they’d rather go abroad and get first team football in a lesser league than bide their time and hope to get a chance at Spurs which I can understand too. Where the club could improve maybe is to try and get some sort of feeder club alliance and then these youngsters that want game time would have somewhere to go while still remaining Spurs players. I just see it as one of those things that happens in football, rather than the club making big mistakes as every big club loses youngsters that some of their fans wanted to make the grade.
Yeah, we definitely need a bridge from the academy to the first team. Too many of our players have got lost in that space in the past. Having said that, we seemed to have a bench full of them at the end of the season that just ended. Very little, if any, game time for them, though.
You can see the problem,in some sports like boxing, tennis, golf, cricket, athletics, cycling and others, you can get a precise measure of an individuals performance and level. In team games like football you have to reach a level of individual skill but then you have the part that,s very difficult to assess. How good is that individual as a team player and how good the team is makes a huge difference to that assessment.
You can if you provide them assurances that a path to the first team is there. Madueke left because he said he couldn’t see such a path, no young player at the club should ever really feel like that, especially a promising one like him. Now we’re left facing the likely prospect that when he eventually leaves PSV it’ll probably be for a sum of in excess of £20m-£25m. Likewise Edwards at Sporting Lisbon, the only half positive there though is that we’ve retained the 50% sell on clause that was in his initial Vitoria deal. That’s a decent amount of money the club could have benefitted from or alternatively decent players the club could have benefitted from. We’re also in a current situation of being low on HG and CG players too. Now personally I’m not someone that gets too worried over that so long as we have around 3-4 of the required 8 quota but ideally with better nurturing of certain players, we could have had the likes of those two in the squad. I agree on the feeder club side of things, we essentially had unofficial ones with Yeovil, Swindon and Leyton Orient years back and it’s something we should definitely look at doing so again, both foreign and English ones this time around. We’ve got a very decent academy with a lot of good individual talent, letting them go for peanuts feels a waste to the work that goes into developing them all.
Scarlett got a couple of cameos in the league, but neither White nor Devine getting some minutes in games we were out of sight in was getting concerning, as much for Hojbjerg and Bentancur getting burned out
Conte was so focused on getting top 4 that I think giving youngsters minutes was well down on his list of priorities. Next season I think they’ll be even less likely to get minutes. Conte is a here and now guy rather than worrying about the future. They probably need loans tbh
Given the state of our fixture list from March onwards, where we had several league fixtures bunched up in a short space of time (four games between 7-20 March, four more between 1-15 May) it made sense to consider subs to preserve a few minutes in players' legs, especially after the (IIRC) Leicester game late in the season where Hojbjerg had ice packs on both legs after the game And it has to be said, the Leicester game stuck out as we were 3-0 up in the 80th minute, yet subbed off Bentancur for Winks - yet we were so in control at that point WHite could've come on and basically played the same role
There are not enough games in a season. Very rare that you would get nearly all domestic cup draws where the opposition is not PL. Similarly rare is CL games where tis actually/effectively a "dead rubber" . We need to get back to 7+ years ago. Loans are increasing upwards in league/club, with the last loan being a half/full season loan to a PL club. Then they are brought into the senior squad fold, and you have a full season thereafter to do an honest "use it or lose it" on whether they have a long(ish) future in the squad.
I agree but maybe Conte preferred Winks to White because of experience etc. I think they’ll leave on loan, hopefully at a good level and then if goes to plan, they’ll push for a place in the team when they return (like Skipp did)
There was rumours of QPR wanting to take Parrott, White and Etete on loan next season - but given Mark Warburton was leaving at the end of the season even when that rumour came up, that's just as likely to be three recalls by November at this point
Ally Gold's sidekick, Rob Guest, is under the impression Paratici likes Saint-Maximin and may weigh up making a bid. That'll literally kill the euphoria of the Perisic signing straight away, lol. He's basically the French Traore, albeit a small tad better I'd say.
Not at all sure we should be selling him, but if it's a done deal he's got to be worth closer to £30m, surely?
Ajax's transfer record is the £18m they paid for Sebastien Haller, so the odds of them paying £30m are practically nil
Well, seeing as we paid over £25m for him and he's (arguably) a more valuable asset now, it seems daft to off-load him at a loss. Perhaps give Ajax the Citeh treatment - put up or shut up.
The club need to get players out, obviously negotiate the best possible price but don’t price players out of a move which could then slow down any incomings
Why is he an "arguably" more valuable asset now when he never plays and is older? You don't want him, why should anyone else pay more money for him.
Agreed, I don’t think he’s worth more than what we bought him for. He has not excelled at all and if no one else is willing to buy him, we need to be realistic about his price especially as Ajax are aware that we want him to go. That will lower his price somewhat given our desperation to move people on.
Who doesn't want him? He does play and has been an important squad player since he arrived, making an appearance in over 30 games in each of the last 2 seasons. If Ajax want him and we don't want necessarily to sell him why shouldn't we expect to get back what we paid or more, you say older I say more experienced. I won't deny he could have been given more minutes and I would have liked him to be used before Lucas on a number of occasions last season.
Not convinced by him , and why would Newcastle sell him anyway , he is the darling of St James's pk , they will want big money and not need it I would rather spend it on a decent striker
