Having one of our own in the team is fantastic for fans alternatively selling an academy product for profit is good which one is the future for Harry Winks.
Like almost any athlete who is not a star, the player and their performance will often divide opinions, this is true of Harry Winks at Tottenham Hotspur. Winks, born less than an hour from Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Hemel Hempstead, has been with the club since he was sixteen joining in July 2012. At times pegged to be a star, Winks may just be in his final season at the club.
After starring in the Hotspur youth academy, at both the U-18 and U-21 levels, Winks made his three-minute debut in Europa League against Partizan in November 2014. Winks had been named to the bench in several matches throughout the season, but those three minutes were his first in action with the senior team, for the then 18-year-old Winks.
After that debut, Winks played only two matches in the 2015-16 season, also in Europa League for a total of 17 minutes. However, in the 2016-17 season, Winks broke through in a major way with the senior squad. After 3 appearances for only 20 minutes over the previous two campaigns, Winks finally got his chance.
In 2016-17 Harry Winks made 33 appearances in all competitions for Tottenham Hotspur, playing nearly 1300 minutes for the first team. Going from 20 to 1300 minutes was a major jump as was going from playing Partizan to Liverpool and Chelsea, but Winks seemed to be making the leap fine. Twelve of those 33 appearances had been starts and eight times Winks had gone the full 90.
Such were the performances coming from the young English midfielder, Mauricio Pochettino was known to compare the #8 to Xavi and Andres Iniesta – two Barcelona legends. However, 2016-17 had two big breaks for Harry Winks, his breakthrough with the senior team and a terrible ankle injury that kept him out for two months to end the season and has been an issue ever since.
Now some four seasons after Harry Winks big breakthrough with Tottenham Hotspur and as Spurs players fight for positions an the team fights to contend for silverware on multiple fronts, there are questions if Winks should continue to be part of that fight or be replaced. Most of the time in the business world of sports this is no-brainer, but for a homegrown academy product like Winks, things are a bit more complicated. So, what has happened with Harry Winks and what is his future?
The Tidy Tottenham Midfielder
Tidy, I cannot count the number of times we have used that word at HotspurHQ to describe a Harry Winks performance, but it is often. When Winks was 20 and 21-years old, tidy was a good thing. However, now that Harry Winks is 24 and has made more than 150 appearances for the club tidy is just not enough.
Whereas his ability to recycle the ball to restart possession and connect the defense to the offense in a number eight role was important to the Mauricio Pochettino approach, that is not the ask of the holding midfielders for Mourinho, and Winks has struggled to adapt. The struggle to adapt is mostly because Winks game has never really progressed from the crisp passing game he had as a youngster.
Winks is very much an excellent passer, completing nearly 90% of his nearly 3900 passes as a professional according to fbref.com. This is particularly true of the short and medium range passes where Winks is excellent. However, his longer passes are less accurate, and he has a career completion percentage under of 79% on passes over 30 yards, a significant decline. Further Winks has completed only 67% – 20 of 30 such passes this season. In other words, Winks moves the ball, just not far.
Now, Winks seems to be thinking about what he is going to do far more than he is doing and ultimately looks for the quick easy pass, versus anything incisive. With only two assists for Spurs in 151 career appearances, setting up others is not Winks’ forte. However, since his ankle injuries started in 2016, he has not been the same defender either.
Winks and Bad Fouls
At first Harry Winks was a harassing, busy bee of a defender, sticking his nose in on every opportunity. While this can be particularly good, a player has to learn when to not dive into a tackle or commit a stupid foul and that is not part of the game Winks has developed and he can be reckless at times.
Across those 151 appearances Winks has 23 yellow cards, which is a yellow in 15% of his appearances. Compare that to Erik Lamela – who is known to be a bit naughty – who has 38 yellows across 293 appearances for a 13% average. This means, yes Harry Winks collects yellow cards at a rate higher than Erik Lamela, which may be shocking for some.
Add in that those 23 yellow cards have come on only 61 fouls and that is astounding. That means Winks picks up yellow cards on 37% of all his fouls, which is greater than one in three. Again, compared to Erik Lamela who has amassed 293 fouls and just 38 yellow cards, for a card on 13% of his fouls. So Erik gets one yellow for about every 8 fouls he commits. This means that the fouls Winks are committing are bad fouls to be carded that often for something he does so infrequently. Those dumb fouls and cards just do not help as a midfielder.
As an attacking player, Lamela picking up a yellow is often not a big deal. Lamela is less likely to be positioned to pick up a second card further forward than Winks protecting the back line. While like Lamela, Winks has never received a red card – for two yellows or otherwise – a midfielder, particularly a defensive midfielder, getting a yellow is much different than it is for an attacker.
The defensive midfielders in the Mourinho system are asked to cover a lot of ground and contribute to both the attack and defense. This means the occasional professional foul and needing to challenge nearly every 50/50 ball. If a player has a yellow card the professional fouls are out the window and sometimes that bit of hesitation on the 50/50 is all it takes for disaster.
In other words, a yellow for Winks will have a much greater impact on how he plays than it would Son or Lamela; just as it would have more impact on Sissoko, Højbjerg , or Toby Alderweireld, thank it would for Harry Kane or Gareth Bale. Different positions, mean different requirements, having a yellow as a midfielder limits the ability to fulfill those requirements.
Not Enough Contribution
Ultimately, Winks is just not providing enough right now for a squad that wants to compete for trophies on 4 fronts. 2 goals and 2 assists across 151 games is just not enough. Not only is he not contributing statistically and be carded too often, but Winks is also actually performing below expectations when looking at his expected assist (xA) and expected goal (xG) contributions.
If you are not familiar with xA and xG, you can visit fbref.com here and learn more. However, the gist of it is that those are analytic computations based on the events of the matches, creating a number for when you are statistically expected to have an assist or have a goal. You can then take that expected contribution and subtract it from the actual contributions to see how efficient, statistically speaking, a player is performing.
For Winks his actual contribution minus his expected contribution was negative in both assists and goals last year and has been negative for assists two years in a row. What this means, is that Winks has been in the position to score or assist, but has not come through, statistically. Now someone could have missed the shot, or the shot was blocked, but the bottom line is from a percentage’s perspective Winks should be producing more.
If you dig in deeper, you see Winks has only had 10 goal chances created since the 2017-18 season. While the volume of shots created (77) is far greater, that is only one legitimate shot on goal in every 7 attempts he creates. Compare that to the eight assists Harry Kane has already this season and clearly, we need more production.
The Tottenham Dilemma
Given everything, one would have to say that having not progressed more in the last couple of seasons – whether due to injury or something else – Harry Winks maybe needs to move on. While Harry is needed for this season to provide cover for Højbjerg and Sissoko, it is clear he is a rung below those players and is struggling in the Mourinho system. Easy call sell him in the summer, but not so fast.
At the same time, Winks is homegrown, has been at this club 8 seasons, and been with the first team five. He started with the club at 16 and Winks is one of our own. As such, there are some that see Winks – me included for a long time – through rose colored glasses. However, the reality is at this point, Winks’ situation is like that of Ryan Mason.
Mason got his breakthrough under Pochettino and was a fan favorite for his effort and enthusiasm in the midfield. For a while Mason made the grade, but as Tottenham continued to advance as a club, Mason was not quite up to the level Pochettino desired and he was sold on. Unfortunately for Mason, injuries derailed his career, but thankfully he is okay and at the club as a youth coach.
As for Winks, he likely has a long career in front of him, it just is not likely to be at Tottenham Hotspur the way things look right now. That said, there are still a couple months before the January window and a lot more season before the end of the campaign. If Winks can find his confidence and stop thinking and start simply playing football again, he may still have the growth to make it at Tottenham long term. However, if that confidence and crispness is not found and soon, a loan or sale may be in the future for Winks, which would be both a success and a disappointment for the academy.