Tottenham’s Troy Parrott dilemma polarizes opinion

Tottenham’s Jose Mourinho insists that Troy Parrott is not yet ready to impact first team proceedings, but how does he truly know until he tests the 18-year-old?

Mourinho after the loss to Wolves said unequivocally that Parrott is “not ready.” Those words were reinforced by the gaffer’s following comments:

"“He’s a good kid we want to help, not only on the pitch but off it. He’s a kid who’s going to have real opportunity but when we decide it’s right.“He was on the bench because Lamela said he was not ready to go on it. He was on the bench so for the past five minutes we brought him on to give some more space for Dele.”"

It’s an incredibly delicate situation, and throwing the teenager prematurely into the fire could damage his confidence and long-term vitality. It would be counterproductive to provide Parrott a spot in the first team if he’s ill-prepared.

Jose spends countless hours with the young Irishman on the training pitch, so you’d hope the gaffer knows how best to seamlessly slip him into the limelight. However, Mourinho has made numerous curious, questionable, even inexplicable and deeply flawed, decisions of late, making one wonder if the gaffer truly knows what’s best for Parrott.

Ensnared in an injury crisis which has left Spurs devoid of a bonafide front man, pressure has been mounting on Jose to give Parrott a go. The situation closely resembles what Japhet Tanganga went through a couple of months ago. Admittedly there was significantly less pressure on Tanganga, who, in comparison, was a relatively unknown commodity.

Regardless, Tanganga thrived against Liverpool in his debut, making Mourinho look like a wizard for the risk forward decision. I suppose, based on Mourinho’s comments, Tanganga was ready for such an occasion while Parrott is suggestively not.

It makes you wonder, though. How would the Irishman respond to a similar opportunity? Aside from a few exceptions, Mourinho has always been reluctant in providing talented, promising youngsters with opportunities to break into the senior team.

And it looks like, for now anyway, we’ll have to trust Mourinho’s judgement on Parrott, even though he hasn’t given us ample reasons to do so recently.