Spurs academy grads Lyons-Foster and Fagan-Walcott sign new contracts

Two graduates of Tottenham Hotspur’s academy setup are planning on extending their stays at Spurs for another year. The club announced that 21-year old Brooklyn Lyons-Foster and 20-year old Malachi Fagan-Walcott, both defenders, have signed a one year extension to their initial professional contracts and will be remaining at the club through the 2022-23 season.

It’s neat when we see academy players progress through the system and sign extensions as it’s generally an encouraging sign that the club is doing the good work of developing players. It means that, as of now, there’s still a non-zero chance that we could see a future Antonio Conte back three All-Hyphen Defense with Fagan-Walcott, Lyons-Foster, and Cameron Carter-Vickers, which would probably be bad but extremely fun to say.

Truth be told, I have a suspicion this extension is more about getting them six months on loan before flipping them next January, as I expect if either Fagan-Walcott or Lyons-Foster were on the path to Spurs’ first team they’d be making benches or on loan in the Championship by now. But this is okay too — as Ryan Ratty wrote a while ago, flipping young talents for small profits is one way that Spurs can maximize talent from their academy.

Either way, congrats to the Hypen Brothers. As someone with a hyphenated last name myself, it is good to see more people in this demographic excelling.