Leeds’ Jack Clarke scouted
CLUB LEEDS UNITED (ON LOAN FROM TOTTENHAM) POSITION WINGER Value £11.5m Age 18 Foot Right Height 5ft 11in Nation England
THE STORY SO FAR: As Manchester City loanee Jack Harrison struggled to impose himself at Leeds, Marcelo Bielsa put his faith in a tangle-limbed teen with a Peaky Blinders fringe. City rate Harrison at £20m, but game after game he departed at half-time, leaving the wings for another Jack’s fearless and unpredictable dribbling.
Clarke’s best game was away at Aston Villa, who led 2-0 at half-time. He came on, scored and tortured Villa’s defence into giving Leeds a 3-2 win.
Starting games was more difficult. He he left one in an ambulance, collapsing on the bench after coming off at Middlesbrough. When he recovered from what was said to be a virus, he’d lost the element of surprise he had previously held over dozy full-backs.
But in the title-winning under-23s team, he revelled in his freedom to nutmeg, clearly too good for the level.
It would have been bold to turn down this summer’s transfer to Champions League finalists Spurs, but Mauricio Pochettino trusts Bielsa to continue Clarke’s development with a season’s loan back at Leeds, after his own education at Newell’s Old Boys. COMPARED TO: Eddie Gray (right), like any Leeds winger because there’s never been one better. At a photoshoot advertising club suits, they posed like father and son. DID YOU KNOW? In 2017 there was so much interest in Clarke, including from Manchester City, that former Whites boss Thomas Christiansen decided against playing him in a League Cup game, hiding him away until he’d signed a contract. “We were afraid that he’d come in and score a goal,” the Dane said, understandably. NICKNAME: Playing darts in a club video on Youtube, he claimed to be Jack ‘The Wizard’ Clarke. Bielsa’s translator Salim Lamrani, a regular bestower of nicknames on Twitter, calls him Jack ‘The Wave’ Clarke. Teenage team-mate Jamie Shackleton goes for ‘Clarkey’. SOCIAL MEDIA: A few holiday photos: in New York’s Times Square, on a quad bike in Greece, and posing at York races with Shackleton’s sister - an image that’s already got tabloids attention, now he’s officially a Premier League starlet. THEY SAID: “We hope he’ll be back as soon as possible,” said Lamrani, after Clarke’s Boro collapse. “You make me sound like a mercenary!” Bielsa huffed in Spanish, tapping his translator’s arm. “We will let him take all the time he needs to recover,” Lamrani clarified.