Former Tottenham striker Darren Ben has brought up concerns surrounding the mentality of summer signing Jack Clarke.
Speaking to Football Insider, the now-retired attacker believes that a shift in mentality after joining a club as big as Spurs had damaged Clarke’s reputation at Leeds after returning to his boyhood club on loan for the season.
Tottenham made Clarke their first signing in over 18-months as Mauricio Pochettino’s side shelled a reported £10m on the promising teenager according to BBC Sport, yet since returning to Leeds, the winger has found it hard to break back into the first-team.
Bent said: “He was brilliant last year, broke into the team, everyone’s talking about how brilliant he’s been, maybe he might have come back with the wrong attitude this season and Bielsa’s like: ‘I don’t care if you’ve gone to Spurs, you’re not coming back with this attitude.’
“It’s not good because from where he was last season, you might have expected him to be one of Leeds’ main men this season. At the moment something’s going wrong, Bielsa’s obviously not happy. He needs to seriously get himself back on that training pitch, sort out what’s going wrong because he’s wasting time at the moment.”
After a season of making 25 first-team appearances as well as scoring 2 goals and assisting another 2 for Leeds as numbers from Transfermarkt show, Clarke has this year found it difficult to return to Marcelo Bielsa’s first-team squad.
The teenager is yet to play a minute of football in the Championship and has not been in the 18-man squad since the second game of the season as appearance numbers from Transfermarkt show, and his only source of action this year has come in the form of the League Cup, which has proven to be fruitless as Clarke was substituted off at half-time this week against Stoke as Leeds crashed out of the competition on penalties.
Tottenham reportedly have a recall option in Clarke’s deal at Leeds as Football Insider report, and it Bielsa doesn’t give the youngster the game time the Premier League side are aiming for, the youngster might be a player that could return to north London this January.