If Marcus Edwards wants to return to Tottenham and fight for a first team place next season, he needs to do more on his loan at Excelsior.
The clock on Marcus Edwards’ potential career at Tottenham is starting to tick very loudly. Many Spurs fans hoped a quality loan move to Excelsior would jumpstart his failing career, but the simple truth is that he hasn’t done enough for his Eredivisie side to improve his stock with Mauricio Pochettino.
The motivation to send him to Excelsior was pretty obvious. Tottenham officials wanted to give Edwards an opportunity to play regular first team football for a club that featured an attractive style of play. An Eredivisie loan was the perfect fit.
In fairness, he’s done more at Excelsior in his brief time there than he’s done during his previous loans. The starlet’s time at Norwich was an abject disaster. In sharp contrast, he’s started seven Eredivisie matches on the campaign. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done enough in his eight total appearances to excite anyone at Tottenham.
Edwards is a player whose talent is creating goal scoring opportunities for himself and others. He has worked harder on the defensive side of his game this season, but he’s never going to turn into an elite defensive winger. If Edwards is going to make his mark at Tottenham it’s going to need to happen with goals and assists.
He has a grand total of one assist on the campaign for Excelsior. That makes it very obvious that he’s not flashing enough potential to compete for a first team place at Spurs anytime soon. That’s a pretty disappointing return for a player Pochettino once compared to Lionel Messi due to his effortless ability to glide past defenders with the ball at his feet.
The only good news is that Edwards still has plenty of time left in his loan. If he can turn it on and start to become a quality goal scorer for Excelsior as the year progresses it might be enough to earn him an opportunity to participate in Tottenham’s preseason campaign next year.
Admittedly, that doesn’t seem very likely at the moment. The odds favour Edwards being sold off by the club sometime in the next year. That’s a disappointing result for a player who possesses so much talent, but Tottenham are a tough side to crack at the moment. It doesn’t appear that Edwards has the necessary drive to bust into Pochettino’s first team.