Former Tottenham Hotspur youth coach and current Liverpool academy head Alex Inglethorpe has admitted he had doubts over whether stars such as Harry Kane, Harry Winks and Danny Rose could make it to the Spurs senior team.

Inglethorpe joined the Tottenham coaching staff in 2006, and had a six-year spell with the north Londoners before joining Liverpool in 2012.




Currently the director of the youth academy at Liverpool, Inglethorpe worked with some of the current Tottenham first team stars in his spell with the north London club.

Inglethorpe has revealed that the players were inconsistent in their younger days, which made him doubt if they could reach their full potential and break into the senior team.
 


"Tottenham had four different first-team managers during the six years I was there”, Inglethorpe wrote in a column for the Coaches’ Voice.

“That allowed me to see how the dynamic between the academy and the first team at a club can change depending on who’s in charge.
 

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“Sometimes you feel like you’re an integral part of the club. Other times, you might feel like you’re a bit more out on a limb.

"When I first went in, the truth is that I don’t know how much we actually could have helped the first team, because I’m not sure we had the players who were capable of going in.

"What we did have, though, was some great younger ones who we worked really hard with.

"There was no one who I ever thought was nailed on to make it, though.

"At 14, I felt that Harry Kane was probably middle of the group.

“There was also Ryan Mason, Harry Winks, Danny Rose, Andros Townsend – they all had their periods when you thought it seemed a million miles away for them, and others where you thought: “Oh my god, they’re going to smash this.”

While Kane, Rose, and Winks are established first-team stars at Tottenham, Townsend and Mason had to leave the club to get regular playing time.

Townsend has established himself as a first-team regular at Crystal Palace, but Mason sadly had to retire at the age of 26 after suffering from a fractured skull in 2017.