With ongoing speculation on the rumour mill linking Tottenham Hotspur with a move for Leeds United starlet Jack Clarke this summer, a report over the weekend suggested that progress had now been potentially made on the deal for the 18-year-old talent.
The Express were one of a few outlets to suggest that we had now almost agreed a £15million deal with the Elland Road outfit for their Academy graduate, but that he had been identified as someone for the future and we had no intention of thrusting him into our first team squad in 2019/20.
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Instead, as part of the deal we would loan him back so he could spend another season under manager Marcelo Bielsa and hopefully, significantly improve both his game time and experience before Mauricio Pochettino made the decision on whether he was ready to step up to the Premier League and play his part with us.
From the little I’ve seen of Clarke, he is talented but has plenty of development left to do and although he was hit by a virus in the second half of last year and collapsed in the dugout when he seemed to be making his starting breakthrough, that presumably explains why he was only limited to four starts in the Championship last season with the vast majority of his game time coming as a substitute.
Whilst the report is sparse on proper details, £15million as a fee seems ballpark sensible to me and the whole buy and loan back is far more believable than the claims Poch thought he was ready for a first team spot already.
As ever though, in the shirt on the pitch is all that counts.
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