Dilan Markanday… And What It Means (Part 1.5)

At the end of my article Dilan Markanday… And What It Means (Part 1), I wrote:

This is part one of a two part look at where Spurs are going wrong. I’m quite excited about the piece of analysis that I will be doing for part two, so be sure to look back in a week or so to catch that.

This is part 1.5. Because what I wanted to achieve was a bit more difficult than I thought and I need your help!

I’ve been working on a little project, looking at all of our youth players going back to the 2007/08 intake which was when I started really getting interested in our youth development (that was the youth intake with Mason and Townsend in). Part 2 is going to be some analysis on what I’ve found; I’ve already started thinking about how this will look.

But I am sharing some of the data here, firstly to give you a first glance, and secondly to see if anyone can help fill in outstanding gaps. This leaves this open to people jumping in and using my data to do their own analysis before I’ve even got out of the starting blocks, but so be it.

The reason I’m asking for help is that I know a lot of Spurs fans have old Spurs handbooks, which tended to record the academy intakes in full. So here’s what I’d love: if you have any Spurs handbooks, would you mind checking my lists of academy players from the year in question against what’s in the handbook for that year, and letting me know if I’ve missed any players?

If anyone has the intake years/dates of birth for these two players I’d be really grateful as I’ve not been able to find any information on them:

• Samuel Smith (2011/12 intake I think)
• James Dalton (2007/8 intake I think)

The spreadsheet is here. All data used was available in the public domain.

Please leave me a comment or drop me a note at windy at windycoys dot come if you can add any information! I’d be super-grateful!