Levy makes startling admission about Tottenham transfers

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Published on:

28 Feb 2017, 8:16 am

By Harry Sykes

Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has claimed the club are able to "get more" from their Academy products than players purchased for multi-millions.

That is the startling verdict of the longstanding Spurs chief as he explained why the club's youth set-up has become vital to the success of the first team.

Spurs' current first-team squad boasts a number of academy graduates, led by poster boy Harry Kane as well as left-back Danny Rose, midfielder Harry Winks, centre-back Cameron Carter-Vickers and attacker Josh Onomah.

The London giants have also made huge sums of cash in the transfer market in the last 12 months from selling academy products Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason and Tom Carroll, while it was announced last Friday that Nabil Bentaleb had agreed a £16million permanent move to Schalke.

Spurs have not spent huge sums in the market on new signings during Mauricio Pochettino's three-year reign although they did buy flop duo Moussa Sissoko and Vincent Janssen for a combined £48million last summer.

Only Victor Wanyama of the 2016 intake has been an undisputed hit, with the other new men struggling to make an impact for the Premier League's second-placed side.

Levy is convinced propelling youth to the forefront of club's first-team operation has paid dividends, while also making the admission that big-money signings do not pay off to the same extent.

"We strongly believe to have a sustainable football club you need to have an Academy that produces players for your first team," Levy told NBC's 'Tottenham Hotspur: To Dare Is To Do' film.

"When you have players that come through the academy they have Spurs in their blood and I think you tend to get more out of a home-grown player than just buying in a player.

"We weren't a club that could continue spending tens or hundreds of millions of pounds each year and we had to find a way to break that deadlock.

"That's why the academy was so important. Building a world-class [training] facility was part of the foundation to try and achieve a better quality first team through a production line of youth," he added.

Spurs moved to their state-of-the-art headquarters at Enfield a few years ago and are also in the process of building a new 61,000-capacity stadium being built on the current site of White Hart Lane.

The club hope to move into their new home, which will be the biggest club ground in the capital, ahead of the 2018-19 season.

In other Tottenham transfer news, a forward has signed after Spurs agreed terms on an out-of-window deal.

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