The final quarter of an hour on Wednesday night featured a cameo by new boy Clinton N’Jie. It was the first time that I personally have clapped eyes on him and on this admittedly brief showing it’s fair to say I think that he’s everything I expected – extravagantly coiffured and booted with Bolt-like speed but rawer than the contents of a conveyor belt in an abattoir.
I could be wrong, and hopefully I’m very very wrong but I suspect that there’s a lot of work to be done.
The reason given for his late introduction into the first team has been lifting his level of fitness after injury but I suspect there’s been quite a bit of raising his fit for purposeness as well.
During his short minutes in the limelight he saw a fair bit of the ball and had several opportunities to take on possession and put himself in useful and dangerous positions as we chased an equaliser. He took the ball well on each occasion from what I remember, what happened next though was less predictable. Spontaneity abounded, whether it be ambitious attempts to beat a defender, find a colleague or try his luck on goal. All of it was surprising, very little of it came off.
Nerves, the exuberance of youth or maybe like a young Human Torch, he’s still learning to control the power?
If these few minutes were typical of what the young man will give us in the near future then Spurs could do worse than announce that we, the paying public, are going to have to be patient before we see an all round player. There are enough short-fused reactionaries at WHL to make N’Jie’s and the coaching staff’s job very difficult if the boy doesn’t start delivering so best set expectations quickly.
His speed means that he should become a useful weapon for us off the bench against tiring or already booked defenders, we may though have to put up with a fair amount of Atouba comparisons before we really see what he can do.
COYS.
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
