John Wenham praises Tottenham Under-21s ‘phenomenal’ start to Premier League Two season
Tottenham News is delighted to welcome John Wenham of Lilywhite Rose as our exclusive columnist. Each week, he’ll be giving his expert insight on the biggest talking points at Spurs…
The Tottenham Under-21s kicked their Premier League Two campaign off with a “statement” performance, during which several players “impressed,” according to John Wenham.
Things couldn’t have started better for the club’s academy side who travelled to Manchester City and put five past last year’s Premier League Two winners, with the hosts having no reply.
It was a phenomenal performance and would have caught the eye of many after Spurs’ Under-21 side had such a poor season last time out.
And Wenham was full of praise for the players and their manager after such a memorable trip up north.
Speaking exclusively to Tottenham News, Wenham said: “Absolutely delighted with that, if you go back to last season the Under-21s didn’t win a league game until January, so to have gotten off to the start they did against last year’s runaway winners is absolutely phenomenal.
“My biggest takeaway from the game though was the academy side playing the exact same formation the first team play, which is something they haven’t done in recent years.
“I saw the likes of Jamie Donley playing in the James Maddison role. Jude Soonsup-Bell, who arrived from Chelsea last January, finished with an absolutely phenomenal goal. Yago Santiago playing on the wing chipped in with two in the kind of role Son Heung-min would play.
“I know they’re good players, so to see them stepping up and getting a statement result like that was just fantastic.
“I also want to highlight Damola Ajayi, who started and grabbed himself a goal. He’s stepped up to Under-21s football, in a game like Manchester City away, and just breezed it, grabbing his goal and acting as a constant threat throughout.
“I heard some people say, City have loaned out some of their best players, but that is irrelevant for Tottenham. It was about going there and getting the job done which they absolutely did. Tottenham also had Donley, Alfie Dorrington and Ajayi in that starting line-up, who are all just in their first years of being Under-21 players.
“I was also delighted to see Estonian centre-back Maksim Paskotsi not only start the game but play the full match at centre-back. He’s somebody that’s had some difficult health conditions since the middle of last year, he was given extended time off away from the club owing to a heart condition.
“Also, with it being the first game of the season, I know that there will have been visiting scouts from other clubs watching that game, and for those Tottenham boys to put on such a performance would have surely impressed them, and hopefully some of them can get loan moves out in the coming weeks.
“Really pleased for Wayne Bennett, the manager, who took a lot of stick for last year’s results, which weren’t always his fault. We were incredibly unlucky in some of those games, and what a statement to start the season with a clean sheet and five goals.“
In other Tottenham news, Wenham was also encouraged by what he saw from the first team’s season opener against Brentford.