Tottenham giving up on Josh Onomah?
By Ryan Wrenn
Josh Onomah will spend the 2017/18 season on loan with Championship side Aston Villa, a move that calls his future at Tottenham into question.
The move came largely out of the blue. Onomah traveled with Tottenham to the United States last week, and even started the match against Paris Saint Germain. He was, for the third year running, set to play a larger role this season.
As the Guardian reports, the deal might have been accelerated due to the injury sustained by Jack Grealish. Aston Villa rely on their young attacking midfield more and more these days, so his three months on the sidelines might have hurt their efforts at promotion if it weren’t for Onomah’s arrival.
On paper, this all makes sense. Villa plug a vital hole and Tottenham can finally get some minutes for a promising young academy product, even if it’s away from the club.
Looking deeper, though, and it’s not quite so clean as all that. While Mauricio Pochettino has, in the past, publically rated Onomah and assured both the player and the fans that he is more or less destined for the starting XI, this is in no way a step along that path.
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The loan system at Spurs, at least under Pochettino, is used less to get experience for younger players and more to put them on display ahead of a eventual sale.
That is essentially the premise of another story coming out this morning. Moussa Sissoko is rumored to be headed on loan to Turkey this summer, and like so many before him will likely be sold off afterwards.
Indeed, to date under Pochettino, no player sent out on loan has returned to play for the club. Alex Pritchard, Aaron Lennon, Dominic Ball, Nathan Oduwa, Nabil Bentaleb, Clinton Njie, Federico Fazio — all were out for at least one season on loan, and all were sold off shortly thereafter.
Onomah might represent the first time, though, that Pochettino went out of his way to single a player out for greatness and still sent him out on loan. Perhaps, then, this is the exception that disproves the rule?
Again, though, the closer we look, the more this looks like the end of Onomah’s career at Spurs.
At the heart of Pochettino’s desire to keep the club’s talent close at hand is the complexity and intensity of his style of football. The high pressing system he favors requires a high level of fitness as well as coordination. Nurturing and developing that talent in-house is the only way Pochettino has to ensure that the talent coming up through Spurs’ system will fit into the first team eventually.
Perhaps a case could be made for Onomah if Pochettino elected to loan him out to a club with a broadly similar style, like say newly promoted Huddersfield Town. Coach David Wagner favors a German style pressing system that isn’t too dissimilar from Pochettino’s.
Instead, Onomah is going to Villa. Bruce is a very good coach and no doubt will be good for Onomah’s development, but he won’t craft him in Pochettino’s style.
Next: Sissoko set on the path to an eventual exit
No doubt Pochettino knows this and is letting Onomah go regardless. Which says that perhaps he’s seen enough of the 20-year-old over the past two seasons to know he won’t fit into Pochettino’s plans anytime soon.
Or, more tantalizingly, perhaps Pochettino is only reluctantly letting Onomah go because he knows that the attacking midfield ranks are about to be more crowded than ever. Ross Barkley rumors continue to circulate, and convincing a player like Jadon Sancho to sign up might be much easier with one less obstacle to the first team in his way.