After a short break we're back with the second installment of our new series Get To Know A Youth Star. To most of us, Tottenham Hotspur's young players remain a bit of a mystery. There's not the sort of wall-to-wall coverage available on the youngsters like this on every minor league baseball player. Thus, our goal is to get you up to speed on what the youngsters at Tottenham are doing.
We started our series with John Bostock, the former Crystal Palace youngster. Next on the docket is young Dean Parrett who joined Spurs from the recently promoted Queens Park Rangers back in 2007 at the age of 16. He became a full-time academy player at that time and has since gone on to feature twice for Tottenham at the senior level, both times during the 2008 UEFA Cup campaign.
Parrett has represted England at various age levels in international play, making 24 appearances in all and scoring 4 goals. At the end of the 2009-10 season, Dean represented England in the European Under-19 Championships in France, earning many plaudits for his displays as the Young Lions reached the semi-finals.
Parrett has spent his last few season on loan working his way up the English football pyramid. In 2009 he went on loan to League Two side Aldershot and followed that up with two different loan spells at League One sides Plymouth Argyle and Charlton Athletic in 2010-2011. During his loan spells in League One Parrett made 19 total appearances and scored two goals, his first ever professional goals.
Parrett didn't join Tottenham Hotspur with quite the amount of fanfare that John Bostock did, the young box-to-box midfielder is still held in high regard by his coaches at both the club and international level. Parrett is still a year or two away from being able to make a real mark on the first team at White Hart Lane and a loan back to League One or, hopefully, the Championship seems like a more likely destination for him.Parrett's game is, to me, very similar to that of Scott Parker or Steven Gerrard. I don't think his ceiling is quite that high though. I think Parrett's future is really more as a squad player. He seems very much like a Jermaine Jenas or Jamie O'Hara. Granted, Jenas has 21 senior caps for England so that's maybe not such a bad thing. Parret is not a very big player, only 5'9", hence the Parker comparison, as a result he may need to improve his strength and tackling. It hasn't presented much of a problem for him yet, but the gap between the Premiership and League One is a big one.
I remember being impressed by Parret's showing in the UEFA Cup against Shakhtar Donetsk, but he definitely needs more experience before any of us can definitively say where and how he fits in to Spurs in the long run. At 19 years old a place playing in the Championship isn't bad. Remember that players who can make an impact in the Premier League at that age are few and far between. Tottenham need to continue to be patient and allow Parrett to develop. I wouldn't be surprised if he stayed at the club for the first half of the season to play in cup and European matches before going on loan in January.