The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
McPake did his homework to bring Spurs kid to Dens
Malachi Fagan Walcott has rubbed shoulders on a daily basis at training with the likes of Harry Kane and made his Tottenham Hotspur debut in the Champions League against RB Leipzig last season.
Despite that, Dundee boss James McPake was determined to leave no stone unturned, finding out as much as he could about the highly-rated Spurs teenager before snapping him up on loan.
The Dens manager consulted pals Andy O’Boyle, who’s head of elite performance at the Premier League, as well as England Under-20s coach Lee Carsley.
Both came back with glowing reports on Fagan Walcott, with McPake then making a successful approach to Tottenham to take the 18-year-old to Dens until the end of the season.
The manager, who handed Fagan-Walcott his Dundee debut against Raith on Saturday, said: “Andy O’Boyle, who has been helping me for some time, watches a lot of Under-23 and Under-18 games in England.
“He mentioned Malachi to me a while ago. It was one we had a wee look at and then when Jose Mourinho got the Spurs job, Malachi was brought into the first-team fold there.
“He made his debut in the Champions League, albeit for 10 minutes, but he was in and around the Spurs first team until he got an injury.
“I also spoke about him with Lee Carsley who I know from Coventry.
“Lee is the England Under-20s coach and he did a bit of digging for me. We obviously did our own due diligence on Malachi.
“We spoke to other people around the England youth set-up, who are now managers in their own right, who had the player when he was younger.
“The reports that came back were great.”
McPake’s efforts paid off with Tottenham agreeing to send Fagan-Walcott up to Dundee.
Now the Dark Blues manager is hoping the youngster can become an even better player during his time at Dens.
McPake added: “I spoke to the academy manager at Spurs just to say: ‘Look, is there a chance that he could go out on loan to further his development?’
“Let’s be honest – as much as he made his first team debut for Spurs, they have a fantastic pool of experienced players and they are on a completely different planet to us.
“I think because we had been monitoring Malachi and they were impressed by the fact that we could go to them and know so much about the boy, then they were happy to loan him to us. He has come up here to improve. He is only young but he has a lot of good attributes.
“You don’t get to train with the Spurs first team and the likes of Harry Kane day-in, day-out if you don’t have something about you.
“So Malachi will definitely add to our squad.”
McPake, meanwhile, has told his players to forget about the league table and concentrate on rediscovering the form that propelled them up the division at the end of 2020.
That’s after seeing his Dark Blues fall further behind runaway Championship leaders Hearts at the weekend with that disappointing 3-1 defeat at Raith Rovers.
The Jambos compounded the Dee dismay with a hard-fought 1-0 home success over fellow promotion hopefuls Dunfermline at Tynecastle.
Dundee dropped to fourth in the table while Hearts can be 16 points clear of McPake’s men by the time they next take to the pitch, though their match at Ayr on Friday will have seen the Edinburgh side play two more games.
However, more important to the Dens gaffer is putting the Stark’s Park defeat behind them on Saturday at home to Inverness Caley Thistle.
McPake said: “We are only halfway through the season and we need to get back to winning ways.
“Consistency is what gets you out of this division. We had been eight unbeaten before Saturday, though there were draws in there.
“We need to turn those draws into wins, get another run going and just forget about everybody else.
“If we can be consistent then we can get ourselves out of this league.”