‘It’s easy to speculate’: Director raves about Tottenham-owned ace with ‘undoubtable talent’

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Tottenham Hotspur winger Jack Clarke has been praised by Queens Park Rangers director of football Les Ferdinand, in conversation with Football London.

Spurs signed the Leeds United academy graduate for an undisclosed fee – reported by Sky Sports News as £8.5million – in the summer and, with Mauricio Pochettino’s blessing, made an instant return to Elland Road on loan for the 2019-20 season.

However, Clarke ended up playing just 19 minutes of Championship football for Marcelo Bielsa’s side this term, with only the League Cup providing the 19-year-old with any meaningful senior football, though that came to an end with a second-round exit.

As a result, Tottenham recalled the 19-year-old – who can play on the wing or up front – and sent him out on loan at QPR, where he has made four appearances to date in all competitions for a combined 114 minutes, according to Transfermarkt.

Clarke has been in and out of Mark Warburton’s side so far but he did impress Ferdinand in a recent reserve game and the QPR director of football suggested the teenager could be in line for more first-team opportunities as he finds his feet.

“You can see that Jack is quality as we played against him last year when he was at Leeds,” said Ferdinand.

“You knew the qualities that he was coming in with but, always when you bring players in in January, he hasn’t played much first-team football this year so he’s trying to find his feet.

“I watched him in the reserves the other day and we saw bits of what we are expecting in our first team and hopefully he’ll be able to transfer that.”

With Pochettino – who brought Clarke to Tottenham – having been replaced at the Spurs helm by Jose Mourinho, it remains to be seen what is in store for Clarke next season.

“It will be interesting. It’s easy to speculate,” added Ferdinand.

“He’s a young boy but he has undoubtable talent and I think once he goes back they’ll probably look at him through pre-season, see how he does and then make a judgement on whether it’s another loan or (Mourinho) may see a benefit to the Tottenham team now and the way he wants to play.”

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Clarke is undoubtedly a talented and exciting player, being thoroughly impressive for Leeds last season, but it seems as though this season has been a bit of a write-off for him so far given his fruitless spell back at Elland Road and the need to find his feet at QPR.

Things are looking much more promising for him now though – he’s slowly being brought to match fitness and could feature more in the first team in the coming months, so if he can get back to his best, it would surely give Mourinho food for thought at the end of the season and going into 2020-21.