Spurs could/should be doing more with the loan system
I try not to use the rose tinted spectacles and assess in a more cold light of day frame of mind, perhaps that is my coaching training coming to the fore, but people sometimes lose sight of the fact that football is a harsh business where passengers are a luxury Tottenham can't afford.
I am all for developing youth, understanding and supporting what we are aiming to achieve at Tottenham. Money wins trophies now, that's a proven fact, it's pie in the sky stuff thinking a club or a manager can simply build a side, without money the chances of success are as minimal as they can get. We have an edge on most clubs, but the trophy winners have a massive edge on us. Football is a business, you gave to win the business battle off the field to build a squad to win trophies on the field.
Being unable to compete for the finished players we would want we have turned to an alternative route. Whether you support our faith in youth or not the club do have a strategy to prepare for the building of a new stadium and beyond. That is better than no strategy at all.
With a youth based strategy comes ups and downs, mistakes will be made, they are learning, but you have to look ahead and ask where are we going, are the youngsters on the right track to get us there. Surrounding them are the experienced players, it is their job to perform consistently and help the youth. I recently wrote about Fernando Llorente and how he uses his experience in a positive way to help the young players both on and off the field. If you make conditions perfect off the field you are giving a player every opportunity to perform on the field. It all matters.
At what point does a player become experienced though? There is no set timeframe and sometimes players don't help themselves. Again I have written before that more English players should go abroad if the opportunity emerges and that we should be sending youth abroad to gain first-team football, as well as learning in a different footballing environment.
Tom Carroll had the opportunity to go to Ajax as part of the Christian Eriksen deal that brought him to White Hart Lane. Surely at his age you would want to go to one of the clubs in Europe with a history of developing quality players and who have UEFA Champions League football. Not Tom Carroll, he turned down a loan move to Ajax and went on loan to Championship side QPR, where their fans will tell you he flopped.
Since then he has struggled to move on with his career, a loan spell at Swansea last season started to reignite it but it's hardly burning bright. He does seem a bit in no-mans land at the moment and his size will always count against him in a defensive midfield role where he is vulnerable in the air. Manchester United targeted Ryan Mason successfully with that ploy so Carroll would be subjected to that too, it would give teams an aerial route to our defence. Scott Parker had the physicality to be able to compete, Carroll doesn't have that.
Tottenham Hotspur is a business, the product is football and in the football landscape today you have to run the club as a going concern. Stamping ones feet and crying to Mummy that Joe Lewis isn't putting his own money in just because two other clubs had sugar daddies build them isn't going to change the situation one bit. Jealousy has never been a positive trait.
Going out on a loan is one thing, but going to the right place is quite another. Chelsea buys players and loan them out to develop elsewhere, often abroad, coming back to the club when they are ready. Some make it, some don't, Manchester City do the same, the Italian champions for the last 4 seasons Juventus had 58 players out on loan last season.
Italian clubs can part own a players registration, in effect part own the player. In Spain recently Atlético Madrid just bought 75% of Yannick Ferreira Carrasco from Monaco. We can't do that in the Premier League, our rules do not allow third party ownership to protect the integrity of results.
Spurs have greatly increased our use of the loan system to develop players and where it within our financial means, I can see the club continuing to buy young talent, loan them out and have a pool of players to either use or sell. Harry Winks is perhaps the next for a loan spell, DeAndre Yedlin to follow perhaps.
2012/13 - 13 loans out
2013/14 - 24 loans out
Once a club have bought a player the club taking that player on loan usually pays a percentage of their wages, in some cases all of it, obviously it depends on what the players wages are. Mohamad Salah is a player Chelsea have bought, it hasn't worked out for him there so he was loaned out and Chelsea want a profit to sell him. We can not deal in that market in that way with players of that quality. Buying and loaning out players are beyond our transfer and wages budget unless they are youth and inexpensive.
If we concentrate on 17-year-olds to 20-year-old players with potential who haven't broken through yet then we can pick them up relatively cheaply. In addition, we are looking to buy players who are expected to develop into top bracket players. We have actively targeted them this window, Atlético Madrid and other Spanish clubs particularly take this approach. Using the loan system, not just as we do now in this country, but increasingly abroad, we can develop these players over a period to the point where they are worth a good deal more than we have paid for them.
Real Madrid run their academy as a going concern, it has to pay for itself through player sales. Tottenham should be doing the same thing, but we don't hear of too many Jake Livermore type fees. Once we have loaned them to a Championship club many seem to stagnate, what is happening with 22-year-old right-back Ryan Fredericks for instance. Having written this a few days ago, I now see we asked for £3 million (US$4.69m - AUS$6.19m - €4.23m) to sell him, rather than loan him to QPR. Now there is news Glasgow Rangers want to take him on loan but with only a year on his contract it doesn't benefit us.
We don't seem to loan players to Premier League clubs very often when they get to this stage, surely that is the season that is going to make them a more valuable asset. Should we not be targeting the promoted clubs, who play football in the right way, to take a youngster and give them a season's football. A player like Alex Pritchard would benefit from a season playing Premier League football, he won't get it with us, he'll just get cups, some UEFA Europa League games and cameos or the odd game.
We have seen a change in the coaching staff and a more professional outlook from the players with health and diet top of the agenda. As sports science improves making small adjustments to small parts improves the whole machine. The body is a players instrument of work, it has to be kept in tip-top condition, falling out of a nightclub is no longer acceptable, not that it ever was. The culture is still to have a beer, fun with the lads for many, that is not compatible with top level sport.
There is a slow gradual change at Tottenham where we are trying to position ourselves with the culture and mentality to challenge for and win trophies. While we have started to make progress with the loan system there is more we can do, not just for the individual player but for the club as a whole.
We have to build a better scouting network and develop a network of link clubs, clubs we can loan to such as the one former player Tony Mowbray is trying to develop at the moment. He and Tottenham had a three-hour meeting to discuss how this could work for the mutual benefit of both clubs as he told the Coventry Telegraph.
It is important there is something in it for everyone and a future path is discussed. If our youngsters go to Coventry City and the club does well, gains promotion perhaps, then they are going to need a better standard of player, which could be further development for the same players or others. There would be no point us wanting to send them the same standard of player as we had the previous year, it would take them backwards.
Paul Mitchell has arrived and is upgrading the scouting and analysis. I have long felt we need to look to Spain more, given how they are brought up to play team football retaining the ball and we have recently appointed two scouts for the region, clearly it's an area we are now taking a greater interest in.
It will be interesting to see how we use the loan system over the next few years. The big question for me is a player like Alex Pritchard. Take Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois who was sent to Atlético Madrid for three years to develop, now a top class goalkeeper he walked straight into the team. Alex Pritchard will not walk straight into our team, but shouldn't we also be creating players that can?
A season-long loan spell at newly promoted Bournemouth, for instance, would create a Premier League player quicker than a partial season with us. In one year, we may then not need to buy a wide attacker but a season of partial development may mean we delay a season finding out about him.
Staying worked for Harry Kane bit that's not to say it will work for everyone, there are only 11 places in a team and we are still trying to develop Andros Townsend, who should have been more advanced as a player than he is.
It's a dilemma and hindsight tells us with each player whether we were right or wrong, do we need a little more foresight though?
Further Related Tottenham Articles
Further scouting network improvements
Spurs should be buying more Spanish youth
I am all for developing youth, understanding and supporting what we are aiming to achieve at Tottenham. Money wins trophies now, that's a proven fact, it's pie in the sky stuff thinking a club or a manager can simply build a side, without money the chances of success are as minimal as they can get. We have an edge on most clubs, but the trophy winners have a massive edge on us. Football is a business, you gave to win the business battle off the field to build a squad to win trophies on the field.
Being unable to compete for the finished players we would want we have turned to an alternative route. Whether you support our faith in youth or not the club do have a strategy to prepare for the building of a new stadium and beyond. That is better than no strategy at all.
With a youth based strategy comes ups and downs, mistakes will be made, they are learning, but you have to look ahead and ask where are we going, are the youngsters on the right track to get us there. Surrounding them are the experienced players, it is their job to perform consistently and help the youth. I recently wrote about Fernando Llorente and how he uses his experience in a positive way to help the young players both on and off the field. If you make conditions perfect off the field you are giving a player every opportunity to perform on the field. It all matters.
At what point does a player become experienced though? There is no set timeframe and sometimes players don't help themselves. Again I have written before that more English players should go abroad if the opportunity emerges and that we should be sending youth abroad to gain first-team football, as well as learning in a different footballing environment.
Tom Carroll had the opportunity to go to Ajax as part of the Christian Eriksen deal that brought him to White Hart Lane. Surely at his age you would want to go to one of the clubs in Europe with a history of developing quality players and who have UEFA Champions League football. Not Tom Carroll, he turned down a loan move to Ajax and went on loan to Championship side QPR, where their fans will tell you he flopped.
Since then he has struggled to move on with his career, a loan spell at Swansea last season started to reignite it but it's hardly burning bright. He does seem a bit in no-mans land at the moment and his size will always count against him in a defensive midfield role where he is vulnerable in the air. Manchester United targeted Ryan Mason successfully with that ploy so Carroll would be subjected to that too, it would give teams an aerial route to our defence. Scott Parker had the physicality to be able to compete, Carroll doesn't have that.
Tottenham Hotspur is a business, the product is football and in the football landscape today you have to run the club as a going concern. Stamping ones feet and crying to Mummy that Joe Lewis isn't putting his own money in just because two other clubs had sugar daddies build them isn't going to change the situation one bit. Jealousy has never been a positive trait.
Going out on a loan is one thing, but going to the right place is quite another. Chelsea buys players and loan them out to develop elsewhere, often abroad, coming back to the club when they are ready. Some make it, some don't, Manchester City do the same, the Italian champions for the last 4 seasons Juventus had 58 players out on loan last season.
Italian clubs can part own a players registration, in effect part own the player. In Spain recently Atlético Madrid just bought 75% of Yannick Ferreira Carrasco from Monaco. We can't do that in the Premier League, our rules do not allow third party ownership to protect the integrity of results.
Spurs have greatly increased our use of the loan system to develop players and where it within our financial means, I can see the club continuing to buy young talent, loan them out and have a pool of players to either use or sell. Harry Winks is perhaps the next for a loan spell, DeAndre Yedlin to follow perhaps.
2012/13 - 13 loans out
2013/14 - 24 loans out
Once a club have bought a player the club taking that player on loan usually pays a percentage of their wages, in some cases all of it, obviously it depends on what the players wages are. Mohamad Salah is a player Chelsea have bought, it hasn't worked out for him there so he was loaned out and Chelsea want a profit to sell him. We can not deal in that market in that way with players of that quality. Buying and loaning out players are beyond our transfer and wages budget unless they are youth and inexpensive.
If we concentrate on 17-year-olds to 20-year-old players with potential who haven't broken through yet then we can pick them up relatively cheaply. In addition, we are looking to buy players who are expected to develop into top bracket players. We have actively targeted them this window, Atlético Madrid and other Spanish clubs particularly take this approach. Using the loan system, not just as we do now in this country, but increasingly abroad, we can develop these players over a period to the point where they are worth a good deal more than we have paid for them.
Real Madrid run their academy as a going concern, it has to pay for itself through player sales. Tottenham should be doing the same thing, but we don't hear of too many Jake Livermore type fees. Once we have loaned them to a Championship club many seem to stagnate, what is happening with 22-year-old right-back Ryan Fredericks for instance. Having written this a few days ago, I now see we asked for £3 million (US$4.69m - AUS$6.19m - €4.23m) to sell him, rather than loan him to QPR. Now there is news Glasgow Rangers want to take him on loan but with only a year on his contract it doesn't benefit us.
We don't seem to loan players to Premier League clubs very often when they get to this stage, surely that is the season that is going to make them a more valuable asset. Should we not be targeting the promoted clubs, who play football in the right way, to take a youngster and give them a season's football. A player like Alex Pritchard would benefit from a season playing Premier League football, he won't get it with us, he'll just get cups, some UEFA Europa League games and cameos or the odd game.
We have seen a change in the coaching staff and a more professional outlook from the players with health and diet top of the agenda. As sports science improves making small adjustments to small parts improves the whole machine. The body is a players instrument of work, it has to be kept in tip-top condition, falling out of a nightclub is no longer acceptable, not that it ever was. The culture is still to have a beer, fun with the lads for many, that is not compatible with top level sport.
There is a slow gradual change at Tottenham where we are trying to position ourselves with the culture and mentality to challenge for and win trophies. While we have started to make progress with the loan system there is more we can do, not just for the individual player but for the club as a whole.
We have to build a better scouting network and develop a network of link clubs, clubs we can loan to such as the one former player Tony Mowbray is trying to develop at the moment. He and Tottenham had a three-hour meeting to discuss how this could work for the mutual benefit of both clubs as he told the Coventry Telegraph.
“I had a three-hour meeting with one football club about their young players and building relationships. We talked about developing relationships where they might bring some players up to our training ground and we might go down and play their team on their training ground.
“But those sorts of relationships are going to be healthy. We need to progress to the point where we don’t want to feed but use each other as a vehicle so we use their young players and it benefits both. At this moment in this club’s history, that’s where we are.”
It is important there is something in it for everyone and a future path is discussed. If our youngsters go to Coventry City and the club does well, gains promotion perhaps, then they are going to need a better standard of player, which could be further development for the same players or others. There would be no point us wanting to send them the same standard of player as we had the previous year, it would take them backwards.
Paul Mitchell has arrived and is upgrading the scouting and analysis. I have long felt we need to look to Spain more, given how they are brought up to play team football retaining the ball and we have recently appointed two scouts for the region, clearly it's an area we are now taking a greater interest in.
It will be interesting to see how we use the loan system over the next few years. The big question for me is a player like Alex Pritchard. Take Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois who was sent to Atlético Madrid for three years to develop, now a top class goalkeeper he walked straight into the team. Alex Pritchard will not walk straight into our team, but shouldn't we also be creating players that can?
A season-long loan spell at newly promoted Bournemouth, for instance, would create a Premier League player quicker than a partial season with us. In one year, we may then not need to buy a wide attacker but a season of partial development may mean we delay a season finding out about him.
Staying worked for Harry Kane bit that's not to say it will work for everyone, there are only 11 places in a team and we are still trying to develop Andros Townsend, who should have been more advanced as a player than he is.
It's a dilemma and hindsight tells us with each player whether we were right or wrong, do we need a little more foresight though?
Further Related Tottenham Articles
Further scouting network improvements
Spurs should be buying more Spanish youth
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