It’s been hard to watch Liverpool’s reliance on young talent the past two weeks and not feel a little jealous. The Reds won the League Cup last weekend with two academy grads in the starting lineup — Harvey Elliott and Conor Bradley — and brought on four more as late substitutes. Yesterday, Liverpool essentially started their U21 team in a 3-0 FA Cup home win over Southampton. 18-year-old second-half substitute Jayden Danns scored a brace, with fellow teenager Lewis Koumas adding the third. It was the first time in Liverpool history that two 18-year-olds have scored in the same senior match, one that also included the club debut of 16-year-old Trey Nyoni.
The media is predictably — and correctly — fawning over this current crop of Liverpool youth as “Klopp’s kids,” viewing them as Jurgen Klopp’s final gift to the club before he rides off into the sunset at the end of the season. It truly is impressive. Yesterday’s FA Cup win was hardly tomorrow’s generation steamrolling a second-division side (Southampton’s manager said the scoreline somewhat flattered Liverpool) but the sheer chutzpah to play a youth team in a fifth round cup match against the club currently fourth in the Championship is certainly unusual. Fans often shout online that they want their club to “play the kids” in cup competitions. Few clubs do it, and even fewer are successful when they do.
So why not Spurs? With no first-team football matches due to the League Cup final and very little news to talk about, it’s natural that there’s been a lot of focus on Tottenham Hotspur’s youth teams and academy. After all, Spurs have made a real effort to find and acquire promising U23 talent over the past couple of seasons, and there’s been a renewed energy within the academy under director Simon Davies.
It’s easy to understand why. Tottenham has always stated its desire as a club to develop and bring young players through the academy system and into the first team. They’ve been moderately successful at it as well! Over the past decade, Spurs have given first-team minutes to academy grads Oliver Skipp, Harry Winks, Kyle Walker-Peters, Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason, and Jake Livermore (not to mention some guy named Harry Kane). But out of that group, only Kane lasted longer than a few years — the rest, apart from Skipp, were eventually sold.
While we’ve gotten excited about Tottenham youth players before (Tom Carroll, Marcus Edwards, and Troy Parrott spring immediately to mind), there’s a palpable energy surrounding the next generation of Tottenham youth talent. Players like Ashley Phillips, Alfie Devine, Matthew Craig, Josh Keeley, and Troy Parrott are impressing out on loan this season. There’s a lot of buzz around U21 standouts Jamie Donley, Yago Santiago, Dane Scarlett, and Will Lankshear. Behind them are players earning plaudits in the U18s and below including Tyrese Hall, Leo Black, Pele Arganese-McDermott, and especially Mikey Moore and Luka Vuskovic. Youth development is not a straight line and not all of these players will become Premier League professionals, but Spurs’ academy is now arguably as talented as it’s ever been.
This renewed focus is enhanced by Spurs’ ability to stream U21 and U18 matches on its in-house SpursPLAY streaming platform, giving fans an unprecedented opportunity to watch. The teams are also very successful this season. It used to be that you had to travel to Hotspur Way to watch youth matches. Now you can do it from your couch. I think it’s safe to say that this is the most attention I can remember being directed at the academy in my 17 years as a Spurs fan. We’re a long way from the years when this blog ranked youth players based on snippets of match footage found online and a whole bunch of (arguably) educated guesswork.
That said, Ange Postecoglou has been thus far somewhat reluctant to utilize the young players at his disposal, which has led to some frustration among fans. Why was Ange using Emerson Royal out of position as a central defender and not Ash Phillips or Alfie Dorrington? Why hasn’t Donley been given more than token minutes at the ends of matches? Why hasn’t Yago Santiago seen the pitch at all?
The answer could be as simple as it’s just too soon. The appointment of Postecoglou has coincided with a pretty substantial realignment in how the club operates from top to bottom. There’s been a concerted attempt to align the academy’s tactics and overall philosophy to that of Ange-Ball to provide a larger and more direct path from the academy to the first team, but the project is still in its infancy.
That’s pretty much exactly what Liverpool did under Klopp. The difference is that Liverpool has had nearly a decade to do what Spurs are only now starting to do. That Liverpool can field a team that’s essentially comprised of U23 players in an FA Cup fifth round and still competently execute Kloppian tactics should feel aspirational — it’s the first year of Ange’s project. The kids may be adapting to Ange-Ball tactics, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready to apply them fully at the Premier League level, nor does it mean that Postecoglou is ready to roll the dice with youngsters with European qualification on the line. It’s one thing to play some kids in a cup match, even a final. It’s another to rely on them in league play.
Remember as well that Postecoglou is still working with a squad of players most of whom he inherited. We can expect there to be a fair amount of turnover in the next few windows, but I can understand if Postecoglou is feeling a small amount of reticence to play a youngster who is still learning the system ahead of an established first-team player who is also still learning the system. These things take time, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that because they’re not happening now doesn’t mean they won’t happen in the future.
It’s also worth noting that we don’t know how many of this crop of Liverpool talent will stick with the Reds or be sold to other clubs. That too should be seen as aspirational — the goal of an academy is to produce players for the first team, but also to develop young players to be sold at a profit to fund the development of future players. Not every Liverpool kid will make it there. Not every promising Spurs academy player will make it either. The act of turning youngsters into competent professional footballers, even if it’s not here, should be considered a success story.
Tottenham doesn’t have the best record in recent seasons of maximizing the ability and performance of its youth players. It’s easy to point to individual examples where Spurs botched the development of promising youth either by refusing to send players out on loan during the Pochettino years, or through bad loans and mismanagement (see: Jack Clarke). Other once-promising players have left the club for arguably greener pastures and haven’t kicked on, like Keanan Bennetts (now playing in the 2 Bundesliga), Reo Griffiths (flamed out at Lyon and is now on loan at Yeovil from Doncaster Rovers), and Kazaiah Sterling (just signed a contract with USL club Pittsburgh Riverhounds).
Spurs have an opportunity now to do something different, but it will take time to see that effort come to fruition. Maybe, like Liverpool, we’ll see more youth players in cup matches next season. Should Spurs qualify, Europa or Europa Conference competition would be ideal opportunities to blood in some young talent. Champions League might make the stakes a little higher, but could also provide opportunities in the right circumstances.
We may never see something like what Liverpool just did in the FA Cup at Tottenham, but there are certainly opportunities to better integrate and align the academy to the first team. It starts with getting the right talent into the right system and seeing what happens afterward. The early signs are good. Let’s see what comes next.