Anybody who watched Jamie Donley’s performances for Tottenham Hotspur during pre-season would be forgiven for assuming he is a full-back.
With head coach Ange Postecoglou’s options limited due to injuries and players being on holiday following international duty, Donley started at left-back in domestic warm-up friendlies against Hearts and Queens Park Rangers. He then came off the bench in the 3-2 victory over Vissel Kobe on tour in Japan, overlapped Manor Solomon and set up Mikey Moore for the winning goal.
The 19-year-old prefers to play in an attacking central midfield role, and that is where he started for Leyton Orient, where he is now on a season-long loan, in their 3-1 defeat against Premier League side Brentford in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday. Donley was positioned behind a front three of Diallang Jaiyesimi, Zech Obiero and Sonny Perkins for the League One (third-tier) side.
Obiero, also 19, played with Donley in Tottenham’s academy for a few years before he joined Orient permanently in 2022.
Orient’s Spurs connection was rounded off by goalkeeper Josh Keeley, who is also with the east Londoners on loan for the rest of the season. The 21-year-old had only trained with his new team-mates once before starting against Brentford after they signed him on the final day of the transfer window just over two weeks ago.
Donley came up against Yehor Yarmoliuk and Denmark internationals Christian Norgaard and Mikkel Damsgaard. It would have been a valuable experience to face that trio, who have a combined 173 Premier League appearances and 59 senior caps. At one point, he was crunched in a tackle by Norgaard and sent crashing to the floor, but at no point did he look overawed.
He showed flashes of his quality in the game, including a fierce drive Hakon Valdimarsson tipped over the crossbar, and an intelligent reverse pass for substitute Ethan Galbraith which nearly led to a goalscoring opportunity.
The England Under-19 international, who was born in Northern Ireland and has represented that nation at youth-team level too, was often responsible for leading Orient’s press. He kept chasing down Valdimarsson when Brentford would play out from the back and was booked for a lunging challenge on Ryan Trevitt when Orient tried to trap their top-flight hosts high up the pitch.
Richie Wellens, Orient’s head coach, believes Donley’s biggest area for improvement is out of possession.
“On the ball, he has the world at his feet,” Wellens told The Athletic after the game. “He can play at the top level if he wants to.
“But you look at the top teams now, as soon as they lose that ball, they sprint back. That is something Jamie needs in his game — the reaction as soon as the ball turns over, whether it is to go and press or slide back into shape. It is something over the next six to eight months, while he is with us, we will try to develop. If he gets that, he will be a real top player.”
Wellens started his playing career with Manchester United’s academy when Sir Alex Ferguson was the first-team manager but made just one senior appearance for them — off the bench in the League Cup. He did go on to play more than 600 games across the second and third tiers of the English league pyramid for clubs including Blackpool, Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Doncaster Rovers. Now 44, he has an insight into what is required to make it at the top.
“Every time (Donley) doesn’t react (defensively), I am on him, because it’s important,” Wellens said. “I thought he was good tonight but there are still little delays. If you delay, they slide a pass, break a line and the opposition are at you. If he wants to play in Tottenham’s first team, which he has the ability to do, then it is something he needs to develop.”
Donley grew up in the Essex city of Colchester, just over an hour’s drive north east of London, and joined Tottenham’s academy when he was eight. He scored on his debut for the under-18s in November 2020 and signed his first professional contract in January 2022. He broke into the under-21s setup the following season and was rewarded in the March with a new contract running until 2027. Just before his loan to Orient, another new deal tied him to Spurs until the end of the 2028-29 season.
He has not generated the same level of excitement as Moore, 17, and 19-year-old Will Lankshear but he was an integral part of Tottenham Under-21s’ success last season as they won the Premier League 2 title. Moore became the youngest player to represent Spurs in the Premier League when he came off the bench in the 2-0 defeat to Manchester City in May and he then starred for England at the summer’s Under-17 European Championship.
Lankshear got voted Premier League 2 Player of the Season for 2023-24 after scoring 23 goals, including twice in the play-off final against Sunderland, but Donley was that side’s creative spark. He registered 12 assists in 17 league appearances — a lot of them were for Lankshear. It is a partnership everybody would love to see them replicate for Tottenham in the top flight.
Donley made his Premier League debut as a late substitute in the 3-3 draw with Manchester City last December and made two more brief substitute appearances that season, but Lankshear is still waiting for his opportunity.
Lankshear, Moore and Donley did not look out of place with Postecoglou’s first team during pre-season. Donley arguably deserves more praise for performing an unfamiliar role, something he was asked about in a press conference while the club were on tour in Japan.
“I will play wherever the manager wants me to,” Donley said. “I’m still young, so I’m learning different positions. I’m enjoying it and if he wants me to play there, I’ll play. (It is) maybe not as challenging in possession, because the way he plays with the full-backs inverted I think I’m quite comfortable in that position, but defensively it’s something that I’ve got to learn. I might need to play there in my career sometime.
“(Senior assistant coach) Matt Wells, who has been coaching the defence, has helped me. They work on defensive drills about keeping a strong line, being ready to turn and run back to our own goal. Being aggressive, showing the winger outside and making sure they can’t get any crosses in. I’ve just got to keep learning.”
Having this versatility — Donley played up front when he was younger — will be important as there is a lot of competition in Tottenham’s midfield. James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Sarr and Yves Bissouma are the established stars while 18-year-olds Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall arrived this summer with big reputations.
“That’s just the way football is,” Donley said. “People are going to be buying players and it’s for me to push harder to get ahead of them — then when I get ahead of them, stay there.”
Spending this season with Orient should provide Donley with regular game time and a better challenge than he’d get with more youth-team football.
He started their first three league games this season, all of which they lost, and was an unused substitute for last Saturday’s 1-0 win against Reading. Less than 24 hours later, he was sat in the stands for Tottenham’s 1-0 home Premier League defeat against Arsenal.
Hopefully, next year, he will be on the pitch making an impact in the top flight for the team he grew up supporting.
After all, he wouldn’t be the first Tottenham academy graduate to benefit from a loan stint at Brisbane Road…
(Top photo: Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)