Thomas Frank backed to hand promising Tottenham talent an opportunity; Luca Williams-Barnett among rising stars

Originally posted on To The Lane And Back
By Jainil Shah | Last updated Sep 4, 2025 10:42 AM ET

Thomas Frank has been backed to hand promising Tottenham Hotspur sensations an opportunity this season

Tottenham Hotspur have been doing a wonderful job with their academy, given how the academy at Hotspur Way has been rolling out talents like a conveyor belt. While the Lilywhites faithful are still awaiting the full integration of Mikey Moore into the senior setup, the next wave of Hotspur Way talent has already been pushing hard to grab Thomas Frank’s attention, and they may not have to wait long…

The North Londoners’ U21s played some dazzling football in the opener of the Vertu Trophy against Bristol Rovers as they went on to grab a three-goal lead inside just 16 minutes whilst playing a side that had four players aged just 17 or under, and while the senior League Two side ended up eventually fighting back and earning themselves a 4-4 draw before going on to win on penalties, if you look at the night and the performances that the starlets put in, it showed how there is a lot of potential bubbling beneath Frank’s first-team squad.

And John Wenham, owner of the reputed Spurs podcast Lilywhites Rose, believes that the incoming head coach will be looking to hand opportunities to the brightest prospects of the academy. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Tottenham News, he said:

“The fact that the Under-21s went three goals up against their senior men’s team in 16 minutes.

“With a really youthful core of Luca Williams-Barnett, Tynan Thompson, Jun’ai Byfield and and Malachi Hardy at the back, tells me that these players are really well liked by Tottenham, highly regarded, and I think there will be opportunities this season.”

Luca Williams-Barnett is highly rated at N17

One of the standout names on the night was 16-year-old attacking midfielder Luca Williams-Barnett. He put in a goal in what was his first game against senior opponents, and this is another step in what looks like a meteoric rise from the academy. If we look into his numbers from last season, Williams-Barnett scored 19 goals and complemented that with nine assists in only 20 U18 Premier League appearances. And it looks like he has carried that form into the new 2025/26 season, given how he has already registered a couple of goal involvements in his first three Premier League 2 games.

And given that he is still only 16, it may be a little while before he starts getting a sniff around Frank’s first-team squad, but the raw numbers that he has been producing are impossible to ignore, and the fact that everyone around Tottenham rates him extremely highly means that Luca Williams-Barnett’s development will be closely tracked over the coming years, and maybe if he continues the current rise, we could find him donning the Lilywhites badge for the senior side sooner rather than later.

This article first appeared on To The Lane And Back and was syndicated with permission.

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