Player Name: Troy Parrott
Club: Tottenham Hotspur
Date of Birth: 4 February 2002
Position: Centre-forward (main), second-striker (secondary)
Troy Parrott – his career so far
At 18 years of age and flirting with promotion to the senior squad of Tottenham Hotspur for quite some time now, Troy Parrott is one of the most exciting prospects the London outfit have in their academy.
The Dublin-born and raised Ireland international centre-forward made his senior debuts for Club and country aged only 17 back in 2019. The first time we saw him with Spurs’ first team was actually during their Asia tour last year, having already trained with the squad throughout the 2018/19 campaign.
But Parrott’s official competitive first-team debut arrived from the first whistle in a Carabao Cup third-round tie at Colchester United in September, 2019 and his Premier League call-up came when he was named on the bench in a 1-1 draw at Everton later that same year, in November. His debut, however, arrived when he came off the bench in December when Spurs beat Burnley 5-0.
Despite his success at lower levels for Spurs, he can only boast with a handful of appearances with the first team overall, only tallying four under his name and all four coming in 2019/20 – two in the Premier League, one in the FA Cup and one in the EFL Cup.
His record for Spurs’ younger squads, however, is very impressive. Parrott has advanced through the ranks, plying his trade both for the U18 and U23 teams, bagging 17 goals and three assists in just 14 games for the former and five goals and one assist for the latter.
But some of his best work came for Spurs’ UEFA U19 squad as he netted nine goals and two assists in nine games in total and was even named top-scorer in the 2019/20 UEFA Youth League with six strikes to his name.
Recently, he was also named in the top 50 list published as part of Goal’s 2020 NxGn award, ranking as 40th wonderkid in world football.
Transfer latest
In some positive Tottenham news, as of right now, there are not many transfer rumours on the lad as it seems that Parrott has his eyes set on Spurs and Spurs only. Just a couple of months back, in February, there was some big Spurs news from the camp as the 18-year-old centre-forward signed a new deal, tying him down until 2023, which would indicate both Daniel Levy and Jose Mourinho see a future for him in London.
With that being said, however, Parrott is also no stranger to interest from other clubs and there were plenty of transfer news surrounding him in the past. Vincent Butler, the director of football affairs at Belvedere in Dublin where Parrott played his youth football, who has known the striker for 10 years, told BBC there was a whole queue of top Premier League clubs in line for his signature not that long ago.
He said that every main club in Britain, including but not limited to Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Everton, were heavily interested. But with him penning a brand new contract just recently, it’s pretty safe to presume he’s in London for the long run.
Apart from Premier League clubs, there were also transfer rumours from the likes of Bayern Munich, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund prior to him signing the new contract.
Given his quality, however, it doesn’t surprise that there were plenty of Manchester United news and the like connecting him with a potential move.
Player profile
Being a centre-forward, Parrott’s main attributes are an eye for a goal and his lethality in the box. As we’ve seen with his statistics in the previous section, the 18-year-old has been able to consistently perform at Spurs’ younger levels, providing the team with both goals and assists.
But apart from the proficiency in the opposition’s box, the young forward is also quite a good dribbler and shooter of the ball. According to Wyscout, Parrott averaged 3.63 shots in 2019/20 with 48.6% of those being on target.
He likes to spend his time either inside the box or just on the edge of it, often occupying the zone 14 and linking up with his teammates. We can see that when we take a glance at his heatmap of the current season as well as with 4.87 touches in the box on average.
When it comes to dribbling, he averages an impressive 4.87 dribbles per game with a 59.6% success rate and this emphasises his creative nature which is a crucial aspect of a modern striker.
To further solidify that point, we have to mention his 1.24 shot assists per 90 minutes which are a clear indication of his ability as the creator for the team. It seems there’s much more to this youngster than it meets the eye.
All stats were taken from Wyscout.
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