Tottenham Hotspur Prospect Rankings: Honorable Mentions

Back by popular demand, Cartilage Free Captain is again reviewing and ranking the top 10 youth prospects at Tottenham Hotspur to see which players have the best potential to follow current players like Harry Kane and Harry Winks, and former Spurs players like Nabil Bentaleb, Ryan Mason, and Andros Townsend into the Tottenham first team. The rules for inclusion are as follows:

• The player had to be 21 or under on January 1, 2017
• The player cannot have seen significant match time with Tottenham's first team

Due to a subjective interpretation of the above rules, we’re omitting Harry Winks from the rankings despite his relatively small amount of minutes last season — he is no longer a prospect but a contributing member of the first team.

The rankings are made by Carty-Free writing staff members and the results tabulated. The articles will be posted in descending order over the next couple of weeks. We’re going to start, however, the way we did last season: by including short vignettes on a few academy players who for whatever reason didn’t quite make the cut. We can’t profile everyone and there are a number of players not on this list who are exciting and could turn into very good players. This is just a curated sampling.

Here are your honorable mentions.

Reo Griffiths (17), striker

Reo juuuuuuuuust missed the cut for our top ten rankings, and based on his potential he could end up much higher on this list in future years. Having just turned 17 in June, Reo has performed very well up top for Spurs’ U18s with seven goals and seven assists last season, got a brace against CSKA Moscow in the U19 UEFA Youth league last September, and even has three caps with the U23s in the Premier League 2. Reo was also on the England U17 side, along with fellow Spurs Tashan Oakley-Boothe and TJ Eyoma, that lost on penalties to Spain in the championship game of U17 European Championships this summer.

Anthony Georgiou (20), midfielder

You may be surprised to see Georgiou in the honorable mentions after his surprising showing at the International Champions Cup. We did our rankings before the ICC, a tournament in which Georgiou probably made the most impressive cameo of any of the youth players present. He’s a tricky winger with a good burst of speed and a pretty good footballing brain. He played a great deal at both left midfield and left back for Spurs’ academy teams. He missed a lot of time last season due to injury. Unfortunately for Anthony, his natural position is absolutely stacked at the first team level right now, but he made a good case for himself in USA, and it could turn into a good loan, or some minutes in the early rounds of the cups.

Here’s a supercut of his touches against Roma.

Japhet Tanganga (18), centerback

Tanganga is generally considered to be one of the best defensive prospects in the Spurs U18s. He regularly partnered with Jon Dinzeyi, a player who made the plane to USA with the senior team but who didn’t get any minutes, but Tanganga is generally considered to have the better future prospects. Tanganga was a starter and regular contributor in a back three for the England U18 side that won the Toulon Tournament in France this summer. Strong on the ball and with a good footballing brain, he’s now getting minutes with the U23s, but if Cameron Carter-Vickers’ path is any indication it could be a while before we see him with the Tottenham first team.

Alfie Whiteman (18), goalkeeper

With the departure of Luke McGee to Portsmouth and the return of Pau Lopez to Spain, Spurs’ third keeper position is now vacant. Unless Spurs make a surprise signing, it seems quite possible that that spot will be claimed by Whiteman (or his teammate, Brandon Austin). A local lad, he’s been a regular in Spurs’ U18 squad and has also played with the U23s, and even made the bench in the League Cup match against Gillingham last season. He helped take Tottenham’s academy team to the semifinals of the FA Youth Cup this past season as well, where they lost to Chelsea. He’s quite highly regarded by the Tottenham coaching staff and was on the plane to USA, but unless disaster strikes Hugo Lloris and Michel Vorm, Whiteman will more likely get his minutes in the Premier League 2.

Troy Parrott (16), striker

Not many have heard of Troy Parrott, but he’s one of the hottest young strikers in Ireland. His signing last season to Spurs’ academy was seen as somewhat of a coup, as he was coveted by the likes of United, Liverpool, and Southampton. If he develops to his full potential he could end up being very, very good. A big, strong kid for his age, he’s used that to his advantage and has turned into a prolific scorer for his former schoolboy club, Belvedere FC. His former coaches rave about him. He sounds a bit like a mini-Harry Kane.

He’s a complete unknown, so this ranking is mostly on what I could glean from reading random youth match reports from Ireland, but he had a nice feature written about him last season, which you should definitely read. He also did this, which as far as I’m concerned completely justifies Spurs signing him.