Handing an injured player a bumper new contract is unconventional, but it was the right move for Tottenham and midfielder Harry Winks.
It’s been quite a while since Tottenham fans have seen Harry Winks on the pitch. After all, he hasn’t played a competitive match since February. That’s precisely why it surprised some Spurs fans to see Winks handed a long-term new contract yesterday.
The English midfielder’s new contract will keep him at Spurs until 2023. That means Winks will be 27-years-old before he can hit the open market. Tottenham clearly see something in him that they wanted to lock up for the long haul.
The obvious question is what that magical quality is. Again, he hasn’t played since February. Mauricio Pochettino and company could easily have opted to wait until he regained full fitness to offer him a new contract. Instead, Spurs chose to capitalize on his injury in a way.
BREAKING: Tottenham midfielder Harry Winks has signed a new contract, running until 2023. #SSN pic.twitter.com/oyoZ0gjtQI
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) May 17, 2018
Tottenham clearly didn’t want to wait for Winks to come back and play even better before they agreed to his new wage packet. Terms of the deal weren’t released, but it’s logical to believe Spurs re-signed him at some sort of discount.
The reason Pochettino likes him so much is very clear. He’s totally different from anything else the Argentine manager has at Tottenham. Spurs have plenty of midfielders that are more physical than Winks, but he’s the only one who can really control the game with his passing.
It’s hard to watch Winks and not get a little whiff of Luka Modric nostalgia. He certainly isn’t the Croatian’s equal at this point in his career, but he has some of those characteristics. When you watch him move the ball from side to side it’s hard not to see greatness in Winks’ future.
On the other hand, he’s going to need to toughen up if he is going to thrive under Pochettino. His injury problems are one thing, but his propensity to get knocked off the ball is quite another. It would serve Winks very well to add some functional weight to his frame this summer. If he can become even an average defender in the double-pivot, he has a chance to break into Pochettino’s starting XI on a permanent basis.
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No matter how you slice it, Tottenham have successfully tied down a player through 2023 that they value quite a bit. That’s good news for Spurs fans everywhere.