Harry Kane: Rise of Tottenham striker shows loaning out is increasingly the way to develop young players - Glenn Moore

The Weekend Dossier

Harry Kane (front) celebrates scoring for Leicester City in the Championship when on loan there in 2013 (Getty Images)

If Harry Kane makes his England debut next week there will be joy at Tottenham Hotspur for he is “one of their own”.

But Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester can also claim some credit for Kane being Roy Hodgson’s choice.

He was on loan to these clubs and while some loans were more successful than others, Kane says he learned from the difficult times at Carrow Road as well as the good ones at The Den.

This is the route to the top now for young footballers. There was a time when a player either came through the reserves at a big club or made his way up the divisions. That still happens, but increasingly rarely.

It can be a long path to glory, taking in such footballing bywaters as Brackley and Welling, Cheltenham and Accrington, Southend and Northampton. All those clubs have helped develop, via the loan system, players in the England Under-21 squad Kane was promoted from on Thursday.

Indeed, seven of Gareth Southgate’s squad named this week to play the Czech Republic on Thursday are currently on loan and three quarters of the 24-man party have been farmed out at some stage in their fledgling careers. Many of Kane’s new team-mates in the seniors also had loan periods, notably Andros Townsend with nine and Kyle Walker with four.

Kane, Walker and Townsend are all Spurs players; the club has been a keen advocate of the loan system, feeling it provides a competitive edge not present in the Premier League Under-21 competition.

Les Ferdinand, now head of football operations at QPR but previously involved in Spurs’ development programme, said this season: “When you’re playing for the Under-21s the environment is quite nice, it’s quite cosy. When you go and play in the Football League, people are playing to pay their mortgage. There is a different emphasis.”

Huw Jennings, Fulham’s academy director, recalls sending a youngster down two divisions to a relegation-threatened club. “They were 2-0 up when a player was sent off 10 minutes before the break. They went in at 2-1 and the rest of the team absolutely pilloried the player who was sent off. It was an eye-opener for our lad. You can’t replicate that at Under-21 level.”

But Southampton, whose youth programme was judged Europe’s most profitable in a recent report by the CIES Football Observatory, are reluctant to use the loan system. The view of Les Reed, the club’s executive director, is that it is more beneficial for players to develop within their own first-team environment.

Three of the six England Under-21 players who have not been on loan are or were with Saints: Calum Chambers, Matt Targett and James Ward-Prowse. Similarly Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Luke Shaw were not loaned out when at the club.

“I don’t think the lower league environment is the best way to nurture your young players,” said Reed. “There’s a theory of ‘rough them up’ but I don’t agree with that. Our lads gain their mental and physical strength at Southampton, nowhere else. Luke and James did not go on loan, neither did Calum; they made the transition into the Premier League with little difficulty.”

Theo Walcott made his mark as a teenager at Southampton (Getty) (Getty Images)

A rival in youth development, an enthusiast for the loan system, points out that when Adam Lallana, Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain came through, “Saints were in League One, then the Championship; players had that opportunity to develop in the lower leagues”. However, while Southampton do now have a quartet of young players on loan, Targett, Ward-Prowse, Harrison Reed and Sam Gallagher are getting their education in the first team.

Southampton’s method works because the manager is prepared to play youngsters in the first team (and is told that is the club’s policy when he takes the job). One reason Spurs loaned young players out is that in the past that was not necessarily the case. “Foreign managers won’t consider players unless they have been in the Premier League,” said one coach, making the argument for Kyle Walker needing to be loaned to Aston Villa before he was given a run at White Hart Lane.

It also helps Saints that, at present, finishing in the top 10 is success, higher is a bonus. That does not apply to the other clubs in the top seven. Even ones with faith in youngsters prefer them with loan experience – the breakthrough players at Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, Hector Bellerin, Jordon Ibe and Tyler Blackett, have all been on loan.

There are a few who have come through the old way. Of the Under-21s, Danny Ings and Callum Wilson have, though even they had loan spells in non-League. But until the Under-21 League is upgraded, or Saints’ managerial model more widely followed, most clubs will continue to send their players to other clubs to develop.

However closely clubs monitor their loanees, it does seem a haphazard way to develop your own. It can work, but for every Kane there is a Josh McEachran. Once the coming man at Chelsea he is now, at 22 and on his fifth loan, a fringe player at Vitesse Arnhem. The science of youth development still needs refining.

Loaned-out young lions: England under-21 squad

Currently on loan: Jenkinson (West Ham, loan from Arsenal, third loan), Moore (Brentford, loan from Leicester, third) , Carroll (Swansea, loan from Tottenham, fourth), Chalobah (Reading, loan from Chelsea, fifth), Lingard (Derby, loan from Man United, fourth), Pritchard (Brentford, loan from Tottenham, third), Bamford (Middlesbrough, loan from Chelsea, third)

Previously been on loan: Bond (4 loans), Butland (5), Bettinelli (2) , Dier (1), Garbutt (2), Gibson (3), Keane (4), Forster-Caskey (1), Berahino (3), Ings (1), Wilson (1)

Never loaned: Chambers, Stones, Targett, Ward-Prowse, Hughes, Redmond