WE’VE NEVER HAD IT
ERIK LAMELA admits he can turn into Mr Angry on the pitch.
But the Tottenham livewire, who has committed more fouls per game than any other Premier League player since the resumption, denies it has anything to with orders from boss Jose Mourinho.
The Argentina winger says his high foul count is more down to the officials making wrong calls.
Lamela (right) said: “It’s the way sometimes I play football. Too many times it’s not even a foul but they are giving fouls.
“I get angry sometimes. It’s not something I’m trying to do – it’s just the way I train
EDDIE HOWE will draw on the lessons he learned 11 years ago as he attempts to steer Bournemouth clear of the choppy waters they are swimming in on the south coast.
Back in 2008-09, the Cherries were on the brink of sinking into an abyss far greater than the one they face now.
They’d been handed a 17-point deduction and were 10 points adrift at the bottom of League Two when Howe (right) arrived.
And it took three wins from three at the end of the season to keep the club’s head above water and maintain their Football League status.
Howe said: “We have at times and how I play. This team is full of people who love to train, love to play and love each other on the pitch. Everyone will try their best for the team.”
Ahead of today’s home clash with Leicester, Spurs are on course for Europa League qualification.
Lamela, 28, agrees that will not make up for missing out on the Champions League but added: “We need to accept it and go to the Europa League. Our season wasn’t the best and it took too long to find the situation we are in now – when we’re winning and the team starts to feel better.
“But we have two games to go and must win both.” definitely looked back and, without going back in time, used certain things from that period. This is a new situation and I don’t think the players necessarily want to hear too much about the past.
“But for us as coaches, having experienced that definitely helps us. “You just never know in football – it has such a way of swinging things around in a very short period. “History has told us to never believe anything is final until it is done. We are in there fighting and we believe it’s still possible to stay in the division.”
GARETH SOUTHGATE will attend his first matches after lockdown this weekend to watch possible England players in the FA Cup semi-finals.
If you see him smiling, that’s because there are more young English footballers on his radar than for many years.
In one week recently, the 31st round of matches in the Premier League, more than 40 per cent of the players in the starting line-ups were home-grown.
That is the highest number ever in data held by the FA going back a full decade to the 2009/10 season.
It represents a significant increase on a routine figure of just 30 per cent of English players starting matches in the months following the run to the 2018World Cup semi-final.
The two semis at Wembley provide a stage for several likely superstars over the next decade – Mason Greenwood, Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka for example, who have all dazzled in the past few weeks.
They are among an incredible 72 England-qualified players aged 24 or under currently getting some first-team matches – mostly here and a few abroad.
It is too early, and too much of a cliché, to call them a new golden generation. But signs of real progress in the development of young talent are real and unmistakable.
Rhian Brewster, an Under-17 World Cup winner alongside Foden and Jadon Sancho, is grabbing goals galore for Swansea, where he is on loan from Liverpool.
Jude Bellingham, just 17, is
CHIEF SPORTS CORRESPONDENT
taking the path forged by Sancho to a big contract at Borussia Dortmund, where he passed a medical ahead of the move on Thursday.
Reiss Nelson is emerging at Arsenal and scored a delightful winner for them in midweek to beat champions Liverpool. Luke Thomas, a 19-year-old left-back, made an amazingly assured Premier League debut for Leicester the next evening, with manager Brendan Rodgers praising “his incredible composure”.
The sheer numbers of high-quality players breaking into first-team action is striking. It appears to be much more than coincidence.
The most likely explanation, the one frequently offered by those working in youth development at clubs, is the introduction of the Elite Player
Performance
Plan (EPPP) in
2012, “a long-term strategy aiming to develop more and better home-grown players”.
One leading coach told me yesterday: “It has certainly had a huge impact. Coaching is now far more holistic, and requires the coach to be far more considered in reaching outcomes for both the individual and the team.” Another reason is the switch in junior football to kids playing on smaller pitches with smaller goals – age-specific matches to help develop skills and technique.
This kind of quiet revolution takes time to work but the evidence looks promising. Of course, not all of the 72 players listed here will progress to outstanding careers. Some may be blighted by injury, some lose their way, some reach full potential by age of
20 and not develop further.
For now, the FA remain only cautiously optimistic. Southgate, as national team boss, is willing to pick the best youngsters, but says they must get big-game experience first, which is why Sancho has become an England regular more swiftly than his exact contemporary Foden.
“We knew there were some really good players coming through our development system but we’ve always said we’ll only put them in if we believe they are really good enough,” says Southgate.
“We spend a lot of time discussing potential but the bottom line for any prospect is that he has to play.
“If Foden can break into the City side he will be playing at a very high level, and then I am sure he will soon find himself in an England squad.
“If young players have a season of opportunity like Mason Mount did this year – playing in the Champions League, playing in a top-four side, playing under pressure, then that can be a great development year.
“It’s great that we are developing these players but they have to play.” There have been a few young wonders in recent times in English football – names like Wayne Rooney, Joe
Cole, Jack Wilshere and
Ravel Morrison, who have taken different paths and only Rooney hitting real heights.
In the moments after England had lost in the 2006 World Cup quarter-final, when he was sent off, then manager Sven-goran Eriksson warned: “Wayne Rooney is the golden boy of English football. Don’t kill him because you will need him.”
It was singular. Golden boy. Rooney was the only hope.
That’s the difference now and hopefully there will be less individual pressure on the current generation, where the talent is spread out.
Which one would you choose as the best now?
Foden, Sancho,
Greenwood, Trent Alexander-arnold,
Marcus Rashford? Or could it be those even younger, like
Bellingham or
Harvey Elliott at
Liverpool?
It’s a fabulous question to even be able to ask.