Spurs are in sync: SCOUT NOTES, July 5th
Spurs are in sync: SCOUT NOTES, July 5th
The free newsletter for scouting aficionados — and transfer addicts.
We’re having fun putting these SCOUT NOTES together. Hopefully, we’re providing some valuable little nuggets of insight and highlighting some transfers and trends that have slipped under your radar. If so, bloody perfect.
We’ve got multimedia transfer window coverage, too! Joe and Llew sat down on Wednesday to prattle on about Interesting Transfers for about 45 minutes on the SCOUTED Podcast. Give that a listen below, and subscribe for more.
You know who else are doing great transfer coverage? . They are the go-to resource if you want to keep track of all the movers and shakers in the EFL this summer. We suggest you check this monster out, then subscribe.
Anway, on with the latest SCOUT NOTES. This one includes the in-sync Tottenham Hotspur project, Mbappé on the move, Maidenhead, and more.
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Spurs are in sync
Since the appointment of Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham Hotspur seem more aligned than ever.
The choppy years prior was defined by conflict, with coaches taking on pretty much everyone, the recruitment not fitting with the expectations. Even the Pochettino era had some disconnects, perhaps highlighted best by the fact that the club didn’t sign any senior player for two years on the spin!
Apart from a drab ending to the 2023/24 season which popped the bubble a bit, Big Ange has been a blast of fresh air at a club that has plenty of potential. This summer looks set to build on the good work of last summer.
Archie Gray is a prime example. Spurs have secured the long-term future of one of the biggest prospects in English football, investing £40 million (minus a Joe Rodon) to get him.
He arrives off the back of a breakout 2023/24 season at Leeds United, his boyhood club, where he played over 50 games and racked up almost 4,300 minutes. A lot of those were as a right-back, where he filled in for most of the campaign as a makeshift option, away from his usual centre-midfield role.
We like Archie. He gives you a Bellingham-like dynamism in midfield, driving through the thirds with athletic running with and without the ball. His right foot is a very gifted one too, perhaps more than you think: he has the range of skill to dink little balls in behind, punch a pass through lines, and smack a 30-yarder into the top corner.
A fun little fact: with this Gray deal, Spurs have now signed four of the last ten EFL/Championship Young Player of the Season winners, and they were seriously linked to about four more on this list.
But transfers like this are only properly exciting because of the Postecoglou factor. Don’t get us wrong, it would’ve been exciting if it was an Antonio Conte getting him, sure. But now Spurs have a coach that will trust, empower and develop young talent like few others, as we saw last season. It unlocks the full potential of Spurs’ savy recruitment that has seen them reshape their squad into something that is deserving of excitement and anticipation.
We spoke about this on one of our exclusive podcasts back in February, which looked at Spurs’ signing of Lucas Bergvall:
And it looks like they could very well be adding Stade Rennais’ Désiré Doué to the mix, which would be another exciting move. Imagine him in a squad with Brennan Johnson, Mickey van de Ven, Radu Drăgușin, Destiny Udogie, Bergvall, Gray, and more. Wooooooooof woof woof.
All that said, one thing we’re keeping a close eye on is how Ange-era Spurs will use the impressive batch of emerging academy talent at their disposal. If there was one thing to criticise him of last season, it’s academy graduates not getting the chances they deserved. That must change now with the likes of Mikey Moore and Tyrese Hall coming through. It starts this pre-season.
Another Mbappé on the move
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Ethan is only where he is because of Kylian, but that wouldn’t be true. The 18-year-old is a legitimate talent in his own right.
He showed it in the UEFA Youth League this past season, where he got hold of games in midfield as a progressive and combative presence. His left foot has the quality to punch passes through lines, and rangy athleticism allows him to step and drive away from pressure — there is plenty to like about his profile and potential.
For NBA followers amongst our audience, there’s no Antetokounmpo-style nepotism at play here. Ethan more than holds his own at this level. He’s not miles off a step up either, and has been regularly involved with the senior squad for some time now.
That’s why LOSC Lille have picked him up after Mbappé Jr. left Paris Saint-Germain.
It will be interesting to see just how quickly he gets his feet under the table there. LOSC have a remarkabe hit rate when it comes to giving PSG academy graduates a pathway to senior football. Mike Maignan, Boubakary Soumaré, Jonathan Ikoné, Timothy Weah, and Fodé Ballo-Touré were all signed from the Parisians before being sold for big profits in the past decade.
Don’t surprised if he’s playing a good chunk of Ligue 1 football next season.
Maidenhead are in the money
Max Kilman’s proposed from Wolves to West Ham will be one of the bigger transfer of the Premier League this summer, and it will make a huge impact further down the English football pyramid.
How? Because when Maidenhead United sold the then 21-year-old, a former England fustal international, to Wolves for £40,000 in 2018, they retained a 20% sell-one clause in the deal. Fast forward six years and they’re set to cash in a huge windfall from the £40 million deal.
It’s only £4 million (and not the mathemtically-correct £8 million) because all parties agreed to lower the percentge in these recent negotiations, but that is still an historic sum of money for a perennial non-league club like Maidenhead, as well as the National League in general.
It’s a club-changer. Such an amount could sustain the team at an increasingly competitive National League level for about half a decade. It can be a driving force in significant off-field improvements to their stadium, training facilities, and academy set-up. It may slingshot the club into the Football League for the first time in its 150 years of existance.
From a wider perspective, this highlights the type of talent and value there is lower down the English leagues. We say this pretty much every newsletter now, but get out and support your local non-league club — you could be watching a future £40 million player like Kilman.
Three Interesting Transfer Things
A hat-trick of intriguing happenings, organised into a trio of quickfire sections.
→ Arsenal lose some good academy talents
This week, the Gunners confirmed that both Amario Cozier-Duberry and Reuell Walters had left the club at the end of their contracts. You can’t keep everyone, but the club definitely tried to, putting offers on the table.
They didn’t manage to do so because neither made a single first-team appearance in their time there, despite being regularly involved with senior training and first-team matchday squads.
Walters’ was an unused first-team substitute no less than 20 times, yet Cédric Soares was prioritised for minutes before him. Cozier-Duberry will be loss as he had the profile to be an in-house Bukayo Saka alternative.
The silver lining is Ethan Nwaneri, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Chido Obi and more coming through — but the same mistakes can’t be made again with them, especially as the club enters a new stage of its competitive development.
→ Big Fally Mayulu to Bristol City
This is an intriguing transfer. We first watched the jumbo-sized Frenchman when he was scoring goals in Austria’s second division, catching the eye for his leggy size, surprising mobility, powerful ball-striking, and long throws!
He earned a move to the top of Austrian football after that season, joining SK Rapid for whom he scored 11 goals in just under 1,500 minutes this past season. We didn’t watch him there, so we don’t really know how he did, but the underlying data (and some very brief clips) suggest he did just fine.
Now he’s moved to Bristol City. They’ve spent €3.5 million to get him, and that could look like a snip if things click for him in the Championship. That is a big if. We’re interested to see how he adapts to such a demadning level.
→ Lukáš Ambros gets a senior move
We’ve had our tabs on the Czech U-21 international ever since we first watched him in the UEFA Youth League, then in some UEFA U-19 EURO qualifiers. He’s a bit of a throwback to the tempo-controlling, all-over-the-pitch playmakers of old. He operates at his own speed, contributing to every phase.
He spent last season on loan at SC Freiburg’s B team from VfL Wolfsburg, and now he’s moved to Górnik Zabrze in Poland’s Ekstraklasa. We know very little about the way they play, but if they empower Ambros, they have a good one.
In case you missed it…
This is where we link to all the stuff that you may have missed on SCOUTED Notebook over the past week or so. Tuck in!
Désiré Doué: before the big move, by Stephen Ganavas
The dribbly Stade Rennais attacker is one Premier League agendas this summer. Stevie profiled him this week, analysing his readiness for any move, the upsides of his dynamic skillset, and some bizarre data points.
The Shortlist: Malick Junior Yalcouyé, with Llew Davies
Brighton are Doing a Brighton™ by getting the all-action Ivorian midfielder from Swedish football this summer. We were ahead of the curve on this one, as we had him on our Shortlist a couple of months ago.
The Sleeping Giant, by Billy Carpenter
As we’re in the middle of transfer season, you should read about how Toulouse have risen from the ashes of Ligue 2 with data-driven recruitment to win a Coupe de France title and compete in European football.
Enjoyed that? Good stuff. We have plenty more transfer-focussed SCOUT NOTES on the way, and even more great stuff in the pipeline.
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