Spurs youngsters Mason and Caulker out on loan

It was announced last week that 18-year old striker, Ryan Mason, and 17-year old central defender, Steven Caulker, had joined Yeovil Town on loan for an initial month. This mirrors the deal last year that took Jon Obika and Andros Townsend to the same club (joining Danny Hutchins, who has now moved to Yeovil permanently) at the back end of the season. Our two lads put in some good performances, with Obika scoring four crucial goals that helped to keep Yeovil in League One. We seem to have a good relationship with Yeovil; Terry Skiverton, the manager there, knows Harry Redknapp well and, if we trust the coaches to be doing the right things, this can only be beneficial to both clubs.

With the Reserve Team being withdrawn from the league for the forthcoming year (see my previous article ‘Abolition of the Reserves – a good thing or a bad thing?‘), I’m expecting a number of the recently “graduated” Academy players – the likes of Obika, Towsend, Butcher, Smith, Cox, etc – to go out on loan to other clubs that we “trust”. Alongside this, I’d expect players like Archibald-Henville and Dervite, who were out at Exeter City and Southend United respectively last season, to be on loan for most of the season. Indeed, Steve Perryman confirmed before our game against Exeter that he expected Troy to join up with them again for this campaign, and rumours suggest that Sam Cox may go there too. Dervite has been linked with a move to Reading.

I’ve made little secret of the fact that I see Mason as the best prospect from our Academy side, and I’d say that Caulker is another favourite of mine from that crop of players, so I find this move quite exciting. I hope that they impress in their first month, and get a chance to extend their loan periods – indeed, they’ve already participated in two friendly games. Their first appearances came against RRFC Montegnee (Mason scored a penalty in a 5-0 win), and they played again in a 3-2 defeat to Grimsby Town. Incidentally, it seems that Mason played in midfield, but his best position is undoubtedly the withdrawn striker role (or “number 10”).

As a slight aside, I was amused to see that Pride of Somerset had dug up a comment that I’d made on another blog and used it in their article! I will aim to round-up the loan situation on here with some regularity.