Agree entirely Ex, why is that do you think ?
Is it down to modern day coaching, where at a young age the only voice allowed on the pitch is the coaches ?
My future son-in-law is both a semi-professional player and a coach/partner of his own highly selective academy (a pretty successful one) : he takes kids at all ages and technically/physically/mentally improves them and works with a number of scouts to get them into professional Academies/first professional contracts.
The question of the mental toughness of the kids has been something that has taxed him and others for sometime; I can be accused of being very generalist here but essentially he'd say that the lack of competitive enviroments in early school/surroundings and up bringing by Parents is now such that so few of them have the backbone/will and iron determination to suceed - they haven't faced adversity and come through - so whilst he and others can produce technically competent, even gifted players he has to find ways to toughen them up both physically and mentally - and he tells me that most parents object to this type of conditioning, even after it's been explained to them why it's so necessary.
So he would say our PC upbringings/parental softness/lack of hardship/lack of competitiveness in schools etc combine to produce mentally fragile kids - that clubs then spend years trying to combat.
But what you can't do is teach leadership to those who are too afraid to take up the challenge naturally.
Of course, he would tell you that kids from broken families, from tougher backgrounds who haven't been pampered / protected often display the right attitudes and backbone, the problem is that now days they don't have the facilities to play the game daily and hone your mental skills in the way that previous generations did.
I don't know the answers, it's now a common issue across Europe and he and other international coaches had a whole debate about it in a tournament in Belgium at the bank holiday and concluded that it is a societal problem and all they can do is look for mental and physical toughness in players from overseas, as local western European kids that have it are a shrinking pool.
He's just recruited two Japanese kids who he says (watching them at weekend) make the locals look as soft as wet sponges and who also have the attitude to match.
All I know is when you look at the hugely succesful teams in the PL history you can easily name the 'hard' men / natural vocal leaders/ tough players that drove their teams upwards and onwards - I don't see that man or men at Spurs and haven't for a long time, somehow we have to find or make those players to turn above average footballers with an above average coach into winners.
