Oof, unlucky for the lad. Hope he recovers well and quickly.
I agree with
@Surfless, tbh - I don't think it's up to the club to keep kids like Markanday and Madueke. If they feel they can establish themselves by moving, more power to them. Personally I would have loved to see Markanday come through as one of the first British Indian kids to play for Spurs, but I can't deny that the chances of him actually establishing himself at Spurs were low.
That points to an issue beyond Markanday, though - it's that the quality of our academy graduates isn't really commensurate to our status just yet.
I've spoken before about Alex Inglethorpe's approach to academy management while at Spurs - his focus on finding lads for the academy who were overlooked by the other London teams on account of physical limitations, but who had the intelligence and drive to succeed regardless.
Our present crop of first-teamers are largely a result of that approach from a decade ago - Kane, Skipp, Winks, Tanganga. And to be honest, that approach has allowed us to create a healthy, self-sustaining academy where a few players are able to make it into the first team, while the majority, even if they never make it at Spurs, are able to build careers in professional football for themselves (Madueke, Tom Carroll, Alex Pritchard, Andros Townsend, KWP, Marcus Edwards, etc.) while generating transfer fees that allow the academy to remain self-sustaining and contribute to the growth of the first team regardless.
However, the problem as I see it is that this approach worked for the Spurs academy of 2010-ish (when the present crop first came through the system).
Since then, our status has risen significantly, to the point where we should be more attractive for the best talent in London compared to where we were in 2010 (behind Arsenal and Chelsea, maybe even behind West Ham in terms of youth talent). At the very least, we should be able to outcompete Arsenal for top London talent at this point.
Yet, we don't see it in the latest crop of players coming through (imo).
Dane Scarlett, Harvey White, Markanday and others - I might be very mistaken, but to me, they seem like the same 'type' of player we were targeting ten years ago - slight, technically gifted, with physical limitations that could be compensated for with intelligence and drive. And unfortunately, the chances of those players breaking into the first team are smaller than with other players, simply because the Premier League's focus on power and physicality hasn't decreased in that time - if anything, it's only intensified since 2010.
By contrast, the likes of Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith-Rowe and others still seem to prefer Arse over us - Saka's mentioned before that we were in for him with Chelsea and Spam, but his family chose Arsenal. These are players who are arguably a bit more the 'complete package', as it were - pace, power, technique, physicality and intelligence.
I think we have a successful academy as it stands. But I think we need to be focusing on attracting some of the top young talent in London a bit more going forward, playing on the strength of our coaches, the training ground, and our record bringing kids through. We don' t have to compromise anymore, imo.
