Tottenham transfer concern as 13 deals get Thomas Frank green light

In the space of five days, Tottenham have loaned out five of their top academy talents to teams across the Football League and Scotland which poses a number of questions with 12 players at the least expected to head out of the door.

football.londonreported earlier this week that after Thomas Frank had assessed his squad in recent weeks, including on the summer tour to Hong Kong and South Korea, he had given the green light to a group of young players being made available for loan in the shape of Luka Vuskovic, Jamie Donley, Will Lankshear, George Abbott, Yang Min-hyeok, Tyrese Hall, Alfie Devine and Dane Scarlett, to get them regular minutes to hasten their development.

Donley and Abbott completed their moves to Stoke City and Wycombe Wanderers respectively on Wednesday, Lankshear made the switch to Oxford United on Tuesday and development squad player Hall went to Notts County the day before. All four clubs have a good relationship with Spurs and took players from the north London outfit last season.

That quartet of moves follow on from the loan of Mikey Moore, long considered the most exciting talent in the academy at that age group, to Rangers, while Ashley Phillips went to Stoke earlier in the summer and fellow centre-back Alfie Dorrington also returned to his loan club from last season with the move back to Aberdeen. Damola Ajayi also went out to Doncaster Rovers early in the summer. On top of that was the £1million permanent deal for goalkeeper Josh Keeley to leave for Luton Town with Spurs inserting a sell-on clause.

All of that means that 13 talented young players from Tottenham will be playing their football elsewhere this season. The Premier League club send out plenty of youngsters each season on loan but it feels this time like there's been a huge push to get many out in one go.

In some cases players just simply are not seen as being able to reach the level required to play for Spurs, in others it's about getting the youngsters regular minutes for development to ensure they do have a chance at Tottenham going forward while for some the club's transfer plans simply block their immediate chances.

That looks to be the case with Vuskovic. football.londonreported his week that as well as a new number 10, Frank wants another senior central defender ready for Champions League football as first choice centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven played just 26 and 22 games last season in a 60-match campaign while Radu Dragusin is still on his way back from his cruciate ligament injury.

With Kevin Danso and Ben Davies used ahead of Vuskovic mostly on the tour and summer arrival Kota Takai available once he has recovered from planta fascia, although his position will also be assessed late in the window, Spurs want Vuskovic to get regular minutes to ensure he continues to learn his trade defensively before throwing him into Premier League and Champions League football. Interested clubs looking for an option to sign the teenage Croatian permanently have been told in no uncertain terms that it needs to simply be a straight loan.

It's not a good look though for Tottenham to be palming off so many of their young players, either in terms of not creating space for talent to come through into their bloated squad or if there is a feeling that the academy is not producing the level of player that can compete in the Premier League.

Back in 2020, Jose Mourinho complained that Spurs did not have the required level of academy players to dip in to and use in the over-18 age group and instead the brightest talents were 16-year-olds like Dane Scarlett and Alfie Devine. There is a certain irony that half a decade on and those two players are yet to break through properly into the first team and are set to head out on loan yet again with only two years left on their contracts, meaning a big decision lies ahead.

football.london understands Devine in particular has a lot of interest from clubs both in the Championship as well as the Eredivisie in the Netherlands.

There is also Tottenham's club-trained issue in the Champions League which means so many youth departures could leave them short for their return to that competition. In essence, Spurs' inability to develop senior academy products for their squad over recent years, with third choice goalkeeper Brandon Austin the only one, means that Frank will have to rely on the 21 non-club trained players he can register in their squad. Three spots that would have been used on academy-built talent will lie empty.

Players like Donley, Lankshear, Scarlett and Devine would not have needed to be registered and could have been used from a B list of academy players but Frank will not have that option as they head out on loan.

The Dane will have to leave senior players out of that squad as they will not all fit in, particularly with a new advanced playmaker and central defender eyed up to come through the door.

Frank's opinions on young players are certainly to be trusted though. He has a history of coaching such players, including his time spent managing the Danish FA's international youth sides and he knows when youngsters are ready or not, having helped develop, among others, former Spurs stars Christian Eriksen and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg as well as Christian Norgaard, now at Arsenal.

However, the exodus of young Spurs players in that 18-21 age group does leave questions over exactly how many players Stuart Lewis will have to work with in his newly-created role of first team academy transition coach.

Tottenham's technical director Johan Lange said last month: "We want players of all ages to have that development mindset, strengthening even more the bond between the first team and academy is something we've worked on for a number years, and with this hire of Stuart coming in this new role, we believe it'll be even stronger in the years to come, because we have some very exciting young players that will come through and push in the upcoming years, and they need that special attention to bridge that big gap that is to go from academy football to the Premier League."

There are of course other talented young players who will remain at the club and Frank will take a look at them in the weeks and months ahead.

Spurs are back in the UEFA Youth League, which mirrors the Champions League fixtures in the group stages. Eighteen-year-old midfield starlet Callum Olusesi, is at this moment expected to be staying to be a leading figure for the north London club in that competition against Europe's best young prospects, which begins next month and is for players born on or after January 1, 2007.

All eyes at Tottenham are also on 16-year-old wonderkid Luca Williams-Barnett, who lit up the U18s level last season and has been playing regularly for Wayne Burnett's U21s so far this summer. Another 16-year-old in centre-back Jun'ai Byfield was taken on the tour by Frank after impressing in training with the first team and coming off the bench in the senior friendly at Luton along with Olusesi, Rio Kyerematen, James Rowsell and Reiss-Alexander Russell-Denny.

Tottenham supporters desperately want new faces during this transfer window but such is the paradox of football fandom they also want to see young players getting their chance, even though one desire often blocks the other. It seems to be the case though that this summer both are areas of concern.