Tottenham third best in the Premier League, 23rd in Europe

According to CIES Football Observatory statistics Tottenham Hotspur, in 2015, were the third best club in the Premier League for producing footballers playing top flight football, that means playing in one of the five top tier leagues, Premier League, Bundesliga, LaLiga, Serie A and Ligue 1.

Manchester United come out on top with 7 players playing for the club and 28 (total 25) for other clubs. In Europe as a whole, they sit third behind Real Madrid (7 and 34 - total 41) and Barcelona (7 and 30 - total 37).

There comes Lyon (12 and 17 - total 29), Atletic Bilbao (17 and 8 - total 25), Real Sociedad (16 and 9 - total 25), Roma (3 and 21 - total 24) before Arsenal in eighth (9 and 13 - total 22).

Before Tottenham (5 and 12 - total 17) in joint 23rd place there is Monaco, Renne, Nantes, Bordeaux, PSG, St Etienne, River Plate (Argentina), Toulouse, Montpellier, AC Milan, Valencia, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid and Caen. another French side are joint 23rd with us Nancy.

Southampton 27th (5 and 8 - total 13), Chelsea (3 and 10 - total 13), Manchester City 45th (1 and 11- total 12) show the value of a young player coming to Tottenham where he will get more of a chance.

You can see why we watch a lot of French football and why we are linked with so many Lyon players.

Taking into account all the 31 European leagues, Ajax have produced the most players (9 and 63 - total 72) followed by Parizan Belgrade (5 and 56 - total 61), Dinamo Zagreb (13 and 42 - total 55), Sporting (8 and 46 - total 54), then Barcelona (7 and 46 - total 53) and Real Madrid (7 and 46 - total 53) tie for 5th spot.