Can Djed Spence, divider of manager opinions, find a home at Leeds? - The Athletic 15/9/23
By Phil Hay, Charlie Eccleshare and more
On a concrete block on a bridge over Nottingham’s River
Trent, graffiti was sprayed a while back. The message is like a throwaway
remark, almost the result of a passing thought as whoever held the can of black
spray paint walked past Nottingham Forest’s stadium nearby: “Djed Spence we
miss ya!!”
Who knows if Spence has ever seen it in person, or seen it
at all, but it is never a bad thing to be appreciated. Forest were the club
where he was loved. Forest were the club where he looked at home. There is a
frozen-in-time photograph of Spence after their Championship play-off
semi-final win over Sheffield United in 2022, of him on the City Ground’s pitch
with the stand behind him almost empty, gazing happily towards the Trent End.
Those are the moments a footballer wants to bottle, a moment people who are
close to Spence wanted him to bottle.
The defender is the quintessential enigma, the breed of
footballer who divides opinion. Ask in certain circles and Spence is described
as complex, difficult or hard work, more effort than he is worth. Ask others,
particularly in the right parts of Nottingham, and he is electric, skilful, a
dream of a right-back in top form. Neil Warnock, a manager who failed to warm
to Spence, famously said the 23-year-old would be “Premier League or
non-League”, his fate determined by his own attitude. The Premier League came
calling for him 12 months ago, but now Spence is back in the Championship,
starting a season’s loan at Leeds United. A good year ahead is in everyone’s
interests.
Warnock has never fully cut loose about Spence, about
exactly why he loaned Spence to Forest from Middlesbrough in the summer of
2021. In doing so, he handed a Championship promotion rival the best right-back
in the division, a player the fans there, as the flash of graffiti makes clear,
would welcome back in an instant. That is what Leeds hope to see in Spence
after signing him two weeks ago: the flair and style which made a Middlesbrough
cast-off a £12.5million ($15.5m) asset in the space of one campaign.
Those who have tracked Spence’s career say Steve Cooper,
Forest’s manager, is the one coach who got him and knew how to make him tick.
Cooper cut his teeth as a coach in England’s junior ranks and had a skill for
reading young players, of understanding how to handle them. Warnock and Spence
had banged heads at the Riverside, unable to see eye to eye and eventually
unable to work with each other. Cooper was more inclined to use the
arm-around-the-shoulder approach, to drum into Spence his value to a team who
conjured the most unlikely promotion from a position at the very foot of the
Championship.
Spence, by joining Forest on loan from Boro in September
2021, was closer to home than he had been on Teesside but still a distance from
his old stomping ground. A south London boy who grew up in Crystal Palace
territory, he played for a local team, Junior Elite, before moving into
Fulham’s academy around the age of 12. At Fulham, he was a centre-back rather
than a right-back, skilful and athletic and good at bringing the ball out from
deep. The academy crop around him was a promising one: the Sessegnons, Ryan and
Steven, were in it, playing on either side of the defence. A lack of natural
dominance in the air would eventually push Spence into a wider role.
Fulham’s mixed opinion of Spence is something of a recurring
theme in the narrative around him. There were points where his levels of
application made them wonder if they should let him go but plenty of occasions
when his performances persuaded them they were onto a good thing. But as he
approached the end of his last year with the under-18s, with his contract about
to expire, Fulham chose to release him. Spence described it as “a difficult
time, to be let go”. It left him in the limbo all academy players hope to
avoid, without a club as the 2017-18 season drew to a close.
That he came onto Middlesbrough’s radar almost immediately
was down to Martin Carter, a Boro scout who had identified an opening by homing
in on the London market and tracking available young players there. Carter had
done enough background on Spence, then only 17, to recommend to Boro that they
make him an offer and take a chance on him. Spence would go through three
managers in the space of three years: Warnock, Tony Pulis and Jonathan
Woodgate. He was stepping out of his comfort zone by moving to the north east
of England, living in digs and trying to settle in new surroundings. Woodgate,
during his stint as manager, made one specific attempt to look after Spence by
inviting him round for lunch on Christmas Day in 2019 to avoid the teenager
spending it alone.
At the stage where Middlesbrough turned to Warnock to rescue
them from relegation from the Championship in 2020, Spence had already amassed
a solid number of first-team appearances without looking out of place. The
irony of the friction that developed between them is that in Warnock’s one full
season in charge, Spence missed just eight league matches and started 22 times.
It was not as if the defender was ostracised from the start, but Warnock was
not enamoured with his attitude, seeing Spence as aloof and, at times,
uninterested. Conversations between them failed to establish any rapport.
There were individuals at Boro who found Spence to be good
company. There were others who thought him impolite or lacking in manners.
Observations about his character can be conflicting. As Warnock put it on
talkSPORT: “I had a few run-ins with Djed. I had one or two chats with him and
a few words were said. He needed to sort himself out.” Their mutual antipathy
was summed up by Spence welcoming Warnock to Twitter last year by tweeting a
picture of himself smoking a cigar after Forest’s promotion.
Oh, Where’s my Manners! Welcome to Twitter @warnockofficial 😘
pic.twitter.com/uur8r2pyVr
— Djed Spence (@DjedSpence) May 29, 2022
When the 2020-21 season finished, Warnock was adamant Spence
should leave and would not be part of his future plans. Boro’s hierarchy, in
general, were happy to ship the defender out.
Certain sources spoken to by The Athletic, all of whom asked
not to be named to protect existing relationships, questioned whether it suited
Boro to paint Spence as a problem because of his exceptional impact at Forest;
the application being maybe Boro had dropped the ball by allowing him to leave
rather than making his presence there work. But another person with knowledge
of his loan to Forest said what happened next was a “curveball” and a surprise
to Boro. The Teesside club did not expect Spence’s form to explode as it did.
They did not anticipate that he would return from Nottingham with Tottenham
ready to sign him for a deal worth up to £20m. Spence bombing out of the
Riverside was the making of his reputation.
Glenn Hancock, one of his old school teachers, had
experience of the sort of authority Spence was comfortable with. “Djed
responded well to strict teachers who wouldn’t nag him and gave him encouraging
feedback,” Hancock told The Athletic, and he wondered if Cooper had found that
sweet spot. It helped, too, that Forest used a 3-5-2 system, tailor-made for
Spence to attack down the right with the freedom to employ his full skill set.
Spence started 38 regular league games for Forest and all three matches in the
play-offs, culminating in a victory over Huddersfield Town in the final. He was
the perfect player for his role, the perfect signing. Leeds have a different
system to Cooper’s, a back four as opposed to a back three, and Warnock
questioned how suited Spence really was to the former. But nothing in Leeds’
analysis of him doubted his ability. Gretar Steinsson, United’s technical
director, had thought seriously about pursuing Spence in his time as part of
Everton’s recruitment staff.
Half a season at Forest was all it took for Spurs to get
interested. By January, Spence was telling other players in Forest’s dressing
room that Tottenham was a future option for him and fairly likely to happen.
The deal was done at the end of the 2021-22 season, soon after Forest’s
promotion. Brentford were strongly rumoured to be tracking him and some in the
game have since asked privately whether that might have been a better option
for Spence, but from Middlesbrough’s perspective, he was always going to Spurs
that summer. It was merely a matter of talking Tottenham up to a price they
were happy with. Boro’s support were unhappy at the loss of a footballer so
obviously suited to the Championship, but internally, Boro were happy to take
the cash.
Spence’s introduction at Spurs, though, was far from ideal.
However the move came about and whoever instigated the approach to Boro,
Tottenham’s then manager, Antonio Conte, made it clear that the driving force
behind the signing was not him. “Spence is an investment of the club,” Conte
said. “The club wanted to do it. I said, ‘OK, this player is young but he
showed he can become a good, important player for us’. The club decided to buy
him.” It was hardly a glowing endorsement or the first time something like it
had happened at Tottenham. Jack Clarke’s £10m move from Leeds to Spurs in 2019
was a deal for which Mauricio Pochettino, one of Conte’s predecessors, seemed
to have no enthusiasm at all.
For several months afterwards, Spence kicked his heels. To
date, he has played seven minutes of first-team football for Spurs. He went out
on loan in January to French side Rennes, where he made a small number of
outings alongside fellow loanee Joe Rodon. The pick of his displays was in a
2-0 away win over Paris Saint-Germain, an afternoon on which Kylian Mbappe and
Lionel Messi were kept quiet.
Rodon, like Spence, came to Leeds on loan this summer. Leeds
and Spurs have a strong executive relationship, particularly between Tottenham
chairman Daniel Levy and Leeds CEO Angus Kinnear. United were able to take
Rodon on a season’s loan despite Spurs initially asking for an eight-figure
permanent offer. They secured Spence just before the deadline for a loan fee of
around £1m, a major coup in their eyes.
Lesley Ugochukwu played with Spence and Rodon at Rennes. “I
got on well with Joe and Spence, probably more off the field with Spence
because he is closer to my age,” Ugochukwu said. “They’re people who showed me
the British mentality.
“Rodon has a strong mindset. I remember we were not in the
starting XI in training and we were losing and everyone was giving up. You
could hear Joe shouting ‘come on, guys. Be strong’. This guy never gives up and
that’s inspiring. With Spence, we liked to laugh together. He’s a cool man and
relaxed. I really liked those guys.”
Spurs underwent another big change in the dugout in June
with the appointment of Ange Postecoglou from Celtic. The club’s tempestuous
partnership with Conte had ended in March. Postecoglou had a look at Spence in
pre-season but omitted him from every friendly. Spence spent time training away
from the main group having not played since April 1 because of injury. Spurs
still believe in his potential and, in line with what happened at Forest, think
he is best suited to operating as a wing-back on the right of a three-man
defence. One source said that greater application would help Spence gain more
minutes on the pitch at Tottenham. From an early stage, it made sense for him
to head out on loan this season, his chances limited by the presence of Pedro
Porro and Emerson Royal, but the door in north London remains ajar.
When Spence travelled up to sign for Leeds, his mother Aisha
came with him. She is considered by those around him as a hugely positive
influence and a rich vein of support. After Forest’s win over Sheffield United
in the play-off semi-finals, she ran onto the pitch with Forest’s crowd at the
City Ground and was videoed on the shoulders of a fan chanting: “Warnock said
that Spence was shite… now he’s fucking dynamite!”. Warnock has since claimed
his warning to Spence that he could as easily be non-League as Premier League
helped to make “the penny drop”. But there is no love lost.
Daniel Farke, Leeds’ manager, would count himself as a
disciplinarian, but no signing at Elland Road was completed without his
approval this summer. The suggestion of Spence got the green light from him,
not least because there might not be a better right-back anywhere in the
Championship and Spence himself needs a chance to flourish again. When he left
Fulham all those years ago, a very young Cody Drameh was coming through behind
him. Spence’s arrival in West Yorkshire a fortnight ago saw Drameh depart Elland
Road for Birmingham City two days later, effectively ending his career with
United. Small world.