Spurs’ DeAndre Yedlin Could Thrive Under Allardyce

It might not be the most titillating comparison to say Spurs’ on-loan full-back DeAndre Yedlin could be this season’s Aaron Cresswell. Outside of his team – West Ham – and its supporters, Cresswell’s reputation doesn’t exactly proceed him. The 25-year-old English left-back hasn’t earned a national call up from Roy Hodgson. Whispers about transfers to bigger clubs have been few. In all, to most football fans Cresswell is just another in a revolving door of Premier League defenders, plying his trade relatively anonymously week in and week out.

There’s something more than that to Cresswell’s story though. Most of his career so far has been spent in the Football League, playing for then-League One side Tranmere Rovers then the Championship’s Ipswich Town. Then, in the summer of 2014, Sam Allardyce recruited Cresswell as part of of West Ham’s dramatic, evolutionary overhaul. He joined the likes of Alex Song, Diafra Sakho and Cheikhou Kouyaté in a side that – at first – looked nothing like the West Ham of old, a side known more for long balls up the pitch and muscular challenges than skill. Together with Hammer veterans, they played some of the best football in England for the first few months of the season. Injuries and circumstance forced Allardyce into reverting to his old ways, a shift that contributed in part to West Ham’s disappointing mid-table finish and the English coach’s termination.

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There was one constant on that West Ham team. Aaron Cresswell played every minute of all 38 games of West Ham’s season, one of only a few players in the entire Premier League that can make such a claim. He was often among the club’s primary threats on the left flank of the pitch when in possession – he managed a Danny Rose-esque two goals and four assists last term – and provided vital support behind the ball as well. Together with a similarly-minded Carl Jenkinson manning the opposite flank of the defense, West Ham had one of the better full-back pairs in the league.

Cresswell emphatically should not have been a player that did well in a Sam Allardyce side, either the one the began the season or the one that ended it. His relative slightness – he’s 5’7 – made him stand out besides the rest of West Ham’s back line, all of whom are at least six feet tall. Yet he came into one of the more physically demanding sides in the league and proved to be arguably one of its best and certainly most consistent player. That he could play his own game in the two drastically different systems West Ham fielded last term only adds to that reputation.

So how does this all related to Spurs’ American full-back prospect? Since September 1st, Yedlin has been on loan at Sunderland. Such an arrangement has served Spurs well in the past. Danny Rose developed the game he continues to play for Spurs in the northeast, and it was likely hoped that Yedlin would also find his footing and come back to London a better player.

Yedlin has played one full game so far for the Black Cats, last Sunday’s 2-2 draw with West Ham. As it happened, it was to be the final act of manager Dick Advocaat. He was sacked the next day.

In his place came Sam Allardyce. With the international break still ongoing, we’ve yet to see what Big Sam has in store for Sunderland, but it’s easy to see him finding a use for Yedlin.

The former Seattle Sounders player can be played at full-back as he was against West Ham last weekend, or he could be played in a more advanced midfield position. United States coach Jürgen Klinsmann has preferred him to play the latter role and, somewhat surprising, it’s begun to pay off.

That’s Yedlin setting up the United States’ equalizer in extra time against Mexico on Saturday. While they went on to lose that game, Yedlin’s role in that goal is at the very least suggestive of the kind of advantages he offers up the pitch. His pace and dribbling ability usually are what make him stand out, but he’s got an eye for a pass that could take him to the next level.

Unfortunately, with Adam Johnson and Jeremain Lens likely earning starts on the right side of attacking midfield for Sunderland, Yedlin’s fate seems to be deeper. He could end up being the Cresswell in Allardyce’s Sunderland side.

The likeness is fairly striking. Yedlin is only an inch taller than the English left-back, making him the shortest member of Sunderland’s back line last weekend. His attacking nous is fairly balanced with his defensive skill, even if the 22-year-old’s game hasn’t quite matured as much as Cresswell’s yet. He lacks experience at the Premier League level, just as Cresswell did, but is as deserving of a chance to prove himself.

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That game against West Ham was the young American’s first full start in the Premier League, so it’s premature to draw too many conclusions from just that match. That said, it’s easy to imagine Allardyce finding some advantage to fielding Yedlin as an attack-oriented full-back much as he did Cresswell in 2014-15. If Yedlin can deliver the same durability and consistency, it’s entirely possible that he could become a vital a fixture in this Sunderland side as his Spurs teammate Rose once was.

Allardyce’s experiment with West Ham last season hit something of a brick wall and was thus abandoned far too early. The tools are there at Sunderland for him to attempt something similar again this term, and Yedlin could become emblematic of the kind of changes this long-dormant team needs.

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