More of 'their own' in Spurs production line

[sak11]

Yes he played for our academy and reserves, but that still doesn't put him in the same category as winks, king, Kane et al.

With regards to 'making him the player he is today' you could say that for a number of players in our squad. Don't forget that he spent a large part of his early career with us out on loan and this would have also influenced his development

He only had one big loan and that was to sunderland. Apart from that all of his development and re-traingin into a LB has been as part of the first team squad.... prior to that he was a bit part left winger who mostly played for the reserve team. It was only after Bale made LW/LF his own towards the end of Harry's tenure, that Redknapp talked about moving Danny to LB and it has been 4-5 years in the making to this point...

People forget but he is the longest serving player at spurs at the moment. He has spent more time here than a lot of academy graduates do in total so by now I would say that he is as invested in this club as anyone else coming up through the ranks.

 

[Chris_D]

It doesn't have to be "players as good as Kane", it just has to be "players good enough to thrive in our squad".

The point isn't about stars, it's about populating a squad with capable, loyal players who are steeped in the club's style and ethic, work well as part of the team and feel they are part of something.

More importantly, it's about not having to blow £15m a head on players like that.

The trouble is unless you count Kane and King no one has made a huge difference for a long time. Some have made a small difference but Levy was suggesting we could have a production line of players from academy to first team (I may misquote a little but that's the gist). I'd love to see it but I fear it may be unrealistic given the rate we've produced first team players in the past. If Kane is the exception not the rule we'll have to use the transfer market to get the quality to compete. I'm not blaming Levy or the youth coaches, just saying producing lots of first team players won't be easy.

 

[Japhet]

It doesn't have to be "players as good as Kane", it just has to be "players good enough to thrive in our squad".

The point isn't about stars, it's about populating a squad with capable, loyal players who are steeped in the club's style and ethic, work well as part of the team and feel they are part of something.

More importantly, it's about not having to blow £15m a head on players like that.

I think from Levy's point of view it's as much about revenue stream as anything. Livermore, Bentaleb, Mason, Townsend and Carroll have raised around 45m in recent years from midfield alone.

 

[davidmatzdorf]

The trouble is unless you count Kane and King no one has made a huge difference for a long time. Some have made a small difference but Levy was suggesting we could have a production line of players from academy to first team (I may misquote a little but that's the gist). I'd love to see it but I fear it may be unrealistic given the rate we've produced first team players in the past. If Kane is the exception not the rule we'll have to use the transfer market to get the quality to compete. I'm not blaming Levy or the youth coaches, just saying producing lots of first team players won't be easy.

I'm not getting this argument. We have generated "a production line of players from academy to first team". It's been done, the first team has been full of them for several years and other clubs in the league and in Germany are full of players who performed capably in our first team, until we improved and got better players.

You seem to be confusing "first team players" with "international stars". As well as Kane, the academy has produced Winks and Onomah and [if not for injury] Edwards, not to mention the first team players who have been replaced: Carroll and Mason and Bentaleb and Livermore and Townsend and more.

You're hung up on this "world class players" thing, repeatedly name-checking King and Kane, as if an academy is a failure unless it pops out one of those every year or two. It's not relevant, nor is it realistic.

The main objective is to do what we have done and are doing, which is to have a few starters and a few backups in the first team squad who perform at the required standard and have saved us millions. The secondary objective is to make millions selling off the academy players who are in the first team, but not quite as good as the others.

If someone moves on to stardom, as Kane has done, then that's great, but it's a bonus. You're using an unrealistic standard to judge.