Tottenham finally make a new signing ... but loaning Jack Clarke back to Leeds makes sense

Winger, 18, signed Tuesday for £8.5m, will be immediately loaned back to the Championship club to continue his apprenticeship under Pochettino’s mentor

File photo dated 16-03-2019 of Leeds United's Jack Clarke. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Tuesday July 2, 2019. Leeds winger Jack Clarke has joined Tottenham, returning to Elland Road on a season-long loan, the Championship club have announced. See PA story SOCCER Leeds. Photo credit should read Richard Sellers/PA Wire.Show less

Typical Tottenham, perhaps. Even when they belatedly make a first signing since January 2018, they will not strengthen their squad. Or not immediately, anyway. Jack Clarke, the winger signed from Leeds United for £8.5 million (Dh39m) on Tuesday, will be loaned back to Elland Road for a year.

Which, in itself, is instructive. It is a feature of Mauricio Pochettino’s management that he is reluctant to place those youngsters he rates highest under anyone’s coaching except his own; Harry Winks, for instance, was never loaned out. But Leeds represent a different case, because their manager is Pochettino’s mentor, Marcelo Bielsa. The Champions League finalist wrote a letter of recommendation when his Newell’s Old Boys, Espanyol and Argentina manager required a work permit to take up a job in the UK. “He is like my second father,” he said last year.

But his experience of Bielsa’s coaching has brought a commonality of thought with shared principles based around pace and pressing and fluid interchanging of position, incorporating a faith in youth and plenty of video analysis. It is no shock that Clarke is trusted to his tutelage just as Pep Guardiola, who has called Bielsa the best manager in the world, has loaned him midfielder Jack Harrison for a second successive season.

From a Leeds perspective, it illustrates the financial sense of paying Bielsa a reported £3 million a year. He is creating value in players. The 18-year-old Clarke had not even made a senior appearance until October. Now he has become another profitable product of Leeds’ academy.

For Spurs, he ticks boxes. Clarke’s greatest asset is his ability to run with the ball and that capacity to beat a man can be invaluable in combating packed defences; he averaged 2.91 dribbles per 90 minutes in the Championship, figures that placed him among the best in the division. An average of 1.85 key passes every 90 minutes meant he ranked highly for creativity. He got two goals and two assists; they came against Sheffield United, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Derby County, four of the second tier’s top teams, so he could scarcely be accused of being a flat-track bully.

Pochettino’s wingers don’t tend to hug the touchlines and are invariably versatile, as Son Heung-min and Lucas Moura illustrate. Sixteen of Clarke’s 25 Leeds appearances came on the right, the other nine on the left. That only five came from the beginning of games indicates the way Bielsa used him as an impact substitute; the older man is fonder of unchanged teams than Pochettino and, with Wolves winger Helder Costa seemingly headed for Elland Road, Clarke may have another bit-part role.

But it also showed the way Clarke’s debut season was interrupted. He collapsed while watching February’s game against Middlesbrough and was taken to hospital. He returned five weeks later, but did not begin another match. His confidence was dented. Even as Bielsa ran out of players in the play-offs, he only turned to Clarke for 13 minutes.

It all suggests another year at Leeds makes sense. Yet so does the eventual move for a player who both reflects Pochettino’s best traditions – Dele Alli and Harry Kane, two other Englishmen with a grounding in the lower leagues, represent the greatest triumphs of his coaching – and brings a comparison with his two clubs’ past. The last teenage winger Spurs signed from Leeds, Aaron Lennon, went on to make 364 appearances for Tottenham and excel for England in a World Cup. And another youthful Pochettino project could be taken as a sign of the manager’s commitment to the club. After waiting for signings, he will wait another year for this one.