Tottenham Hotspur U21 striker Will Lankshear has been scoring goals for fun as of late. One of a cadre of promising youth attacking talent, Lankshear has 11 goals in 11 appearances in the PL2 competition this season, including 5 in January alone. Those performances led to him picking up the PL2 Player of the Month award, and he hasn’t stopped there, yesterday playing record-breaker.
In a Premier League Cup tie against Fleetwood Town, Lankshear scored three goals in 11 minutes (sheesh, that’s starting to sound like his number…) to put the Lancashire youth team to the sword in a 6-0 win for the Spurs U21 side. That’s the fastest hat-trick at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, no mean feat for a guy barely able to get a beer at the pub. The goals are worth checking out, and the Tottenham Hotspur Academy Twitter account has been kind enough to chuck all the goals in one tidy package for us:
All three are neat striker’s finishes, showing good movement, composure, and opportunism – but my favorite of Lankshear’s is probably his second, where he takes a fantastic touch to bring down a long pass before bamboozling the Fleetwood Town keeper and bisecting two defenders to knock the ball in the goal. Make sure you stick out the video for Spurs’ sixth as well, where Yago Santiago makes a couple of Fleetwood defenders look somewhat ridiculous.
Spurs are starting to put together a wealth of attacking talent at youth level. As well as Lankshear and the aforementioned Santiago, you’ll note that the highly rated Dane Scarlett also scored and Jamie Donley, who’s seen minutes for the senior team this season, secured himself four assists. There’s also the promising Jude Soonsup-Bell, who’s also been knocking goals in for fun with 8 in PL2 this season; and that’s without even mentioning the likes of Troy Parrott on loan at Excelsior and Alejo Veliz at Sevilla.
Now, youth development is a crapshoot – it’s always important to remember this – and it’s quite possible that none of these guys make it at Spurs; but it’s exciting to see the Spurs youth system once more excelling, if for nothing more than another revenue stream. The hope, though, is that some of these prospects will make significant contributions to the first team in future – the hard part now is for them to continue to put their hands up for selection, and for Ange Postecoglou and Director of Football Johan Lange to determine the best way to bring them into the fold moving forward.
Exciting times!