God, so much news today. Who opened the News Sliuce, and why was this not done last month? Here’s the latest from our good buddy Matt Law in the Telegraph: Oliver Skipp is apparently available for sale for the right price, and he’s currently getting interest from all three of the promoted Premier League clubs: Leicester City, Southampton, and Ipswich Town. Law also says that Skipp is “expected” to leave the club by the end of the transfer window.
The Leicester link has been known for a while, and was especially interesting because it raised the possibility of the Foxes starting a Tottenham Hotspur discarded homegrown midfield of Skippy and Harry Winks, which is kind of hilarious. But Ipswich and Southampton joining the party is also interesting — joining an up and coming manager like Kieran McKenna at Ipswich would certainly have its appeal.
Look, let’s be fair — Oliver Skipp is not good enough to be anything except rotational cover at Spurs this coming season, but he’s a perfectly cromulent Premier League caliber midfielder, especially for a club in the bottom half of the table. I can absolutely understand why he’d be of interest to the likes of Ipswich, Leicester and Soton — he’s homegrown, decent enough, and has leadership potential, plus enough time to develop a little more. Jose Mourinho said Skippy could’ve been Tottenham’s club captain in the future, and you can see why — he does have an air about him. But Spurs are at a level he’s just not at right now, and he also wants more game time. Fair play.
Now, some people are going to get overly concerned about Skipp, a homegrown, club-trained player who has been at Spurs since the age of 8 leaving and what that does to our homegrown numbers with regards to our Europa League squad. We’re pretty much okay in that area for the Premier League, but in order to maximize the Europa League squad we’d have to probably bring in another club-trained player (Kyle Walker-Peters, for example) in order to maximize the squad.
But honestly — who cares? It’s the Europa League, we can just name a smaller squad and make up the difference with youth players who are on List B. It probably means some fringe foreign players don’t get named to the Europa squad, but, like, whatever? I’m just not concerned about it this season, and Tottenham’s homegrown situation will vastly improve once players like Lucas Bergvall, Archie Gray, Will Lankshear, Luka Vuskovic, and others age up and into the first team.
Basically:
At any rate, it feels like Skippy will be allowed to leave if a good offer comes in, and that feels okay to me. I might not be his biggest fan, but the fella is Spurs through and through and deserves to go to a place where he can get regular football.
