Tottenham’s striker coach Les Ferdinand says Blues frontman Connor Wickham is better off playing in the Championship and learning his trade at this stage of his career. Spurs are understood to be the frontrunners for Wickham’s signature when he eventually makes the expected leap into the Premier League.
Ferdinand said: "It’s all well and good going to a big club but only if you are playing - there is no point taking Wickham out of the Championship if he’s not going to play in the first team.
"Someone might buy him and loan him back to further his education. But I think many of these young kids have tasted first team football so they need to be playing.”
Such a loan-back deal has been mooted in a number of the many reports linking Spurs with Wickham, who Ferdinand says he has watched a number of times: "I’ve seen him on a few occasions now, but unfortunately for Connor Wickham at the moment he is playing as a winger.
"They play him wide on the left or wide on the right, so he is perhaps not able to show what he can do as a centre forward. That’s always difficult, but there is obviously a lot of talk about him.
"When you look at his size, I mean he is 17 years of age and you can just imagine him in youth team football running through everybody because he was that size at 15.
"He’s now hitting that progression, playing man's football and it will take him a bit of time to adapt to that.”
Tottenham’s academy manager John McDermott and their assistant technical co-ordinator Chris Ramsey watched the recent home match against Hull, along with former Town coach Charlie Woods, who also now works at White Hart Lane, while ex-Blues coach Bryan Klug is now assistant academy manager and head of player development with the north Londoners. Technical co-ordinator Tim Sherwood was spotted at Saturday's defeat to Portsmouth.
Last week Town boss Paul Jewell said that the Blues had received no offers for Wickham since he had been at the club.
The England U21 international recently signed a contract until the summer of 2013 which is understood to include a clause which would mean he would be sold if the Blues receive a bid at an already set level believed to be somewhere in the £10 million to £15 million range.