REPORT: Oliver Skipp ready to leave Tottenham for more game time

We know there’s going to be a number of prominent exits from Tottenham Hotspur’s playing squad this summer as Ange Postecoglou continues to mold Spurs in his image. But while Oliver Skipp’s name has come up now and again in lists of players Tottenham “might listen to offers for,” we really haven’t seen many many rumors linking him away from the club.

And frankly, we still aren’t. But now at least we’re getting briefs about what Skipp himself wants to do. Writing in Football.London, Alasdair Gold suggests that Skipp wants more playing time next season and would consider leaving his youth club and head elsewhere to get it.

Skippy got a lot of playing time this season during the injury crisis around the end of 2023 and start of 2024, but as the squad got healthier, he saw his playing time drop pretty precipitously, and it’s clear that Ange Postecoglou doesn’t see him as much more than a squad player or rotation option. He did see some time as a makeshift inverted left back and that positional flexibility might serve him well in the future if he decides to stay at Spurs past this summer, but I can kind of understand why he might want to head elsewhere.

Full disclosure: I haven’t been much of a fan of Skippy’s game, but I do quite like him as a person and particularly as a player who has become a Premier League caliber footballer coming out of Spurs’ academy. He’s a success story, even if he doesn’t end up succeeding fully at Tottenham. Part of the issue is I think he’s not a perfect fit at either the six or the eight in Postecoglou’s tactics, which means he never really looked at home in either position. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad player, it’s just a bad fit.

Selling him means Spurs would be down another homegrown, club trained player and that might have ripple effects as Spurs continue to prepare for the transfer window this summer. That said, we’ve already seen one potential replacement for Skippy already today in Marcus Edwards. Skipp out and Edwards in might even make Tottenham a small profit, and wouldn’t that be interesting?

Incidentally, both the Edwards and Skipp rumors were broken today by Gold and interestingly enough, both Marcus Edwards and Oliver Skipp share the same agent. Guess we know who Alasdair’s source is!