Postecoglou: We’re not a club that can spend a billion on ready made players | OneFootball

Ange Postecoglou has defended Tottenham’s strategy of buying younger players of late but admits more experience would benefit his squad.

Spurs spent money on four teenagers in the summer in Archie Gray, Wilson Odobert, Lucas Bergvall and Min-Hyeok Yang, with Dominic Solanke the only real proven Premier League player to join the club.

And asked if it is a strategy which can bring Tottenham success, he said: “We’re rebuilding a team. Are we going to be a club to spend a billion pounds to buy ready-made players? No, we’re not. There are very few of those. There are ones that can do, but we’re not one of them. So that’s the reality.

“So then you’ve got to say ‘ok, where’s your spend going to go?’ I was really keen to get Dom in because I knew he’d make us better from day one, absolutely. And he has, he’s been outstanding.

“When you are paying for ready-made players, there’s a premium. How we allocated the rest of that money was a decision we had to make. Do we go for somebody else who is ready-made?

“We could have done but I think it would have been one of those stories where I’ll be 70 years old and I’d be saying ‘you know what, I could have signed Archie Gray’… and Archie Gray ends up being the player we know he’s going to be.

“So you go ‘you know what, we probably do need another experienced player, but I don’t think we can pass up Archie’. I think this is a unique opportunity, a unique space for us to get a really talented 18-year-old. You have to make that decision, I thought it was the best decision for the club and I think it will be the best decision for the club in the longer term.”

Postecoglou does admit, however, that Spurs will need more experience to help those younger players succeed.

“When you have finite resources, that doesn’t affect other decision you make. So I think it’s a balance of both. Moving forward, we probably need to err on the side of getting a little bit more experience, just to help the group, because we’ve got very few at that kind of sweet spot in terms of ages.

“And we want to give the guys in their teens or early twenties the opportunity to keep growing. We need to make sure we put quality around them, so how we allocate the next resources may shift a little bit. But I’d hate to be sitting here now and saying we had an opportunity to sign Archie Gray at 18 and we passed it up because maybe we could have got a player who helps us for a couple of years.”