Pochettino opens up on Troy Parrott’s Spurs future – ‘We need to be relaxed’

Tottenham Hotspur certainly have an up-and-coming talent on their hands in young Troy Parrott, with the teenager showing his class over the past week.

Parrott was called up to the Republic of Ireland U21 squad for the first time ever and opened his account on his debut against Bulgaria.

Benched for the next game against Sweden, Parrott then came off the bench at 1-0 down and scored twice to help his side win 3-1.

This follows on from an impressive pre-season for the 17-year-old, who was taken on the tour of Asia by Pochettino.

The young Irishmen also featured heavily across the pre-season games, particularly impressing against Juventus up against some quality defenders.

With Fernando Llorente and Vincent Janssen both leaving the club this summer, Parrott is now technically the second-choice out-and-out striker at Spurs.

However, it appears that Pochettino does not want to get too carried away with the academy player, a mistake he may have made before with a young Marcus Edwards (Sky Sports).

Poch said (Football London): “The progress…yes I think the progress was there because he had the possibility to be involved in pre-season. Now he’s more consistently training with the first team. But I think he needs time, we need to be relaxed. We cannot put his name in the spotlight every day because we’re not going to help him by doing that. He’s still so young.

“The best way to help him is to be calm and relaxed about him. If he’s going to be involved, perfect. If he’s going to be involved with the U23s instead, perfect. Sometimes he’ll train with us, good.

“Now it’s a process where he needs to be relaxed. If we put too much pressure we’re going to force or push him to make a mistake and that’s what we don’t want.”

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