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In parallel with the game of managerial musical chairs that has been played by Andre Villas Boas, Tim Sherwood and Mauricio Pochettino, there have subsequently been a lot of backroom reshuffles and wholesale changes over the past year at Tottenham Hotspur. Naturally, this has left a few gaps to fill as we head towards the 2014/15 season- and today, the club announced the plugging of one of those with the appointment of Ugo Ehiogu as the coach of our U21 side.
We are delighted to announce the appointment of Ugo Ehiogu as coach of our Under-21 side - http://t.co/kbOcGXoxIi pic.twitter.com/pHmEtASckV
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) July 25, 2014
As this news merited a whole announcement of its own across the club's social media outlets, you can tell that this is being viewed as a pretty important development by the Spurs hierarchy. It's not hard to understand why- truth be told, there's been a fair bit of disruption in the management of the Tottenham youth sides over the past couple of seasons. The upheaval began with the departure of wildly successful U21 manager Alex Inglethorpe to Liverpool in 2012, and was only deepened with the releasing of Sherwood from his role as Technical Co-ordinator (which apparently meant he was in charge of standardising coaching across the different levels of the club) to take over the senior squad last term. While some continuity has been maintained in the form of overall Academy Head John McDermott, who looks to be staying on in the role for the foreseeable, it's nice to finally have some further clarity over who exactly will be working with this highly talented generation of Spurs youth products.
Furthermore, the instating of Ehiogu in the role is a particularly shrewd move, and one which deserves trumpeting. The former England international has been involved with the Spurs youth setup for at least the past couple of years, having stated in a 2012 interview that he was working part-time with our U16s (clarified again in this 2013 piece). Ehiogu is thus a candidate who has been quietly subsuming himself into the environment which he has now received a key post in for a decent length of time now, and will thus be able to hit the ground running with his colleagues and new charges.
All in all, more positive and progressive news- provided, of course, that Ugo doesn't insist on a role being found for his long-term bromance buddy Gareth Southgate too, that is.
