- Oct 19, 2004
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It's about setting standards. If a youth player cannot be disciplined, arrive on time and the like, then you risk spreading that kind of behaviour/attitude if you reward the footballer.
Poch's watershed moment was the uprising by the young players against the likes of Adebayor, Kaboul etc because the latter were taking the piss. I don't think he or we want that attitude creeping back in, and while I don't think Edwards is either that bad nor able to realise what he needs to do to succeed, cutting him slack because he has done well in youth football and showed a flash or two in the latter stages of a drubbing of Gillingham? What example would that set? If you have great potential (and it is potential right now) then you don't need to be on time, you don't need to follow the rules everyone else does, you don't need to be part of the team, you can just be you and do your own thing. That is the antithesis of what Poch is all about.
And what Poch is all about is what has got us where we are today.
That’s all good and well, and am on board with most of that, but what do we actually know are Edwards’ biggest crimes?
At the moment, as far as Spurs goes the only whispers we’ve heard is that he needs to listen to the coaches and work on his game without the ball and that possibly there’s been the odd occasion when he’s been a bit mardy.
Then we had reports that he was late for training at Norwich. Which could just be about being at a new place?
That’s hardly “Adebayor” refusing to train properly, wanting not to train twice a week, telling the first team coach how to do his job, level rebellion is it?
Now, there may be other things, that aren’t in the public domain, but most people’s writing him off as a bad egg are doing it based on no more than scant rumours.
Baring in mind he’s been with us a decade or so, loyal to our academy (when he definitely had better offers) because both him and his dad have always said they really like it at Spurs, always performed to an extremely high level, always seemed to be working hard in games, was made captain of the U19’s CL team last season, I can believe he can possibly be an arsy teenager sometimes and is a bit perturbed about how his career has gone backwards but I find it hard to believe he’s a major trouble maker.