Harry Kane, Ryan Mason Emergence Negates Need for Major Tottenham Transfer Spend
As the end of the 2014-15 campaign approaches, Tottenham Hotspur will be joining their fellow clubs in making preparations for next season. Speculation is already emerging that a culture change more akin to that seen in north London a decade ago might be in the offing.
Goal.com's Greg Stobart reported on Wednesday that up to 10 players could be sold as part of a move to a more youth-oriented recruitment policy led by recently appointed Head of Recruitment and Analysis Paul Mitchell (a colleague of head coach Mauricio Pochettino at Southampton). The Daily Mail's Martin Samuel also cites dialogue between Chairman Daniel Levy and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust, which backs up the suggested move away from the big spending of recent years.
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The contributions of several academy products this season—either brought through the ranks or signed as talented prospects in their later teenage years—will undoubtedly have influenced such a shift in how the squad is shaped. Indeed, the good form of players including Harry Kane, Ryan Mason and Danny Rose has been in stark contrast to the ongoing struggles of expensive purchases like Paulinho and Roberto Soldado.
Like any chairman, Levy will not need much convincing to adopt a more frugal approach that still yields good results.
For Levy, it might have brought to mind the alluded-to last time the club went in a similar direction, ahead of 2004-05. With talented young players like Jermain Defoe, Robbie Keane and Ledley King already at the club, the then-newly appointed sporting director, Frank Arnesen, instigated the recruitment of more highly rated, but relatively unproven, young players.
Not all would last long or click, but from Michael Carrick and Reto Ziegler in '04 to Michael Dawson, Tom Huddlestone, Jermaine Jenas and Aaron Lennon a year later, their motivation to succeed engendered an improvement that resulted in Tottenham being more competitive than they had been in several years. The club has rarely been out of the mix for European qualification since.
The obvious difference in the present is that the club's own youth system has taken the lead in producing viable first-team players. In addition to those already mentioned, Nabil Bentaleb and Andros Townsend have become full-time internationals since their promotion. There is optimism others will follow suit in the next few years.
They include attacking midfielder Alex Pritchard, who has shone at Brentford (seen in the above video produced by the Championship club) and for England's under-21s this season, and 20-year-old winger Kenneth McEvoy—who has reportedly been awarded a new contract—per the Irish Independent's John Fallon.
Of those representing the club further down the youth ladder, defender Cameron Carter-Vickers and midfielder Joshua Onomah were among those to impress in Spurs' run to the FA Youth Cup semi-finals.
In terms of outside recruitment, the club have already made steps to a more low-key transfer policy. Ben Davies and Eric Dier—both 21 and purchased relatively inexpensively—were signed last summer, while a move for Milton Keynes Dons midfielder Dele Alli (seen below in a video from the League One side's YouTube channel) was agreed in February ahead of next season. The 18-year-old's comments at the time suggests a faith-in-youth policy is already being deployed as a recruitment tool.
"I like the way the manager has been working, developing the youth and bring a lot of young players in," Alli told Spurs' official website. "I wanted to come to a club where the manager puts a lot of trust into young players."
If these can follow the paths of Kane and Mason, not to mention Dawson, King, Huddlestone and Lennon, Spurs supporters have reasons to be encouraged.
Mitchell was involved in the good return on young players seen at Southampton. If they are indeed to be the core of the playing staff they wish to assemble, he and Pochettino will not want to settle on anything less than a certain standard (even though that is easier said than done).
The Daily Mail's Samuel struck a note of caution in his earlier-mentioned piece, warning against a youth-led policy if it is to mean prize assets being developed only to be sold to rival clubs. His example of the momentary regression forced by Carrick's sale to Manchester United in 2006 is accurate.
But as such, the central midfielder was the only one of the relatively unproven set Spurs signed in the middle part of the last decade (Keane was more established by the time of his arrival at White Hart Lane) they regretted having to sell. Others were moved on when the club wanted, rather than the players.
The more pertinent warning would be for Spurs not to act too drastically in revamping their squad this summer.
In 2004 they were just removed from a far-too-close call with a relegation battle, and years of mid-table mediocrity before that. The general age of the squad was much higher too. What followed was built around youth, but not at the complete expense of pre-existing or newly recruited experience (notably provided by Noureddine Naybet and Edgar Davids).
Barring a dramatic fall-off in form, Tottenham will at worst be a half-dozen or so points off a top-four place this May.
Stobart's Goal.com piece mentions the likelihood of neglected or underperforming players like Emmanuel Adebayor, Etienne Capoue Younes Kaboul, Paulinho and Soldado being among the "up to 10" offloaded this summer. But the signings of the last few years should not all be similarly tarnished (excluding more obvious successes like Christian Eriksen and Hugo Lloris).
Some such as Vlad Chiriches, Mousa Dembele and Federico Fazio are still useful enough as squad players that a severe overhaul should not be contemplated lightly. Part of the problem with the "class of 2013" group signed with the money from the departures of Gareth Bale and others was they all came at once, exacerbating their individual struggles settling in.
Others like Erik Lamela and Benjamin Stambouli have only been sporadically involved of late, but they have shown enough evidence to suggest they are worth persevering with.
We will begin to find out soon enough just what direction exactly Tottenham are heading in. This season has proved a young team not completely assembled expensively can compete in the Premier League if the talent is there. It has been made all the sweeter too given the club's hand in developing so many of these footballers.
Like a decade ago, however, there has been more to it than just a reliance on this crop of young players. If Levy and the club's decision-makers have learned anything from all these years, it is that it is foolish to go all-in on just one way of doing things.
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