It was Youth Night at Tottenham Hotspur in their 3-0 Europa League win over Elfsborg, but one youth player who didn’t feature at all was Will Lankshear. Big Willy Lanks has been used pretty sparingly and mostly in the Europa League campaign, but in this one Ange Postecoglou opted to use Dane Scarlett as a second half substitute, with Scarlett the scoring to put Spurs ahead.
Now maybe we know why. According to Alasdair Gold, Lankshear is now very likely to head out on loan for the second half of the season, probably to the Championship.
This is a good opportunity for Lankshear to get some quality minutes under his belt, ones he desperately needs. The PL2 leading scorer last season, he’s seemingly not favored by Postecoglou, and getting minutes and playing well in the Championship at age 19 is a good indicator of quality. I don’t really have a strong preference for where Lankshear would end up from the clubs on Gold’s list... so long as it isn’t Burnley.
Scarlett, meanwhile, is set to stay at Spurs and will NOT be loaned out again — in fact, because he played tonight it means he CAN’T be loaned out, since by rule you can’t play for more than two clubs in a season. Postecoglou explained the rationale for keeping Scarlett in his post match press conference.
“We had a look at his situation. He has had a couple of disappointing loans. I think sending him out again without any sort of real prospect of him developing, we just felt let’s keep him training with us and give him an opportunity to train with us and play with us and see how it goes.”
With the win today, Spurs finished fourth on the Europa League table and is guaranteed a bye to the Round of 16, bypassing the playoff round. That’s great news as it will give Spurs some much needed rest in February — Spurs will play no more than six matches next month, even with the cups included.