It is 524 days since Josh Onomah last played a competitive football match. It is well over 1,000 since he last completed a full 90 minutes.
They would be troubling statistics for any footballer, let alone one who had been hailed as one of the brightest talents to emerge from Tottenham Hotspur’s academy in years when he broke through in 2015 and who played for every England age-group side from under-16s to under-21s.
It has been a trying period for Onomah, 27, but he is not the sort to give in easily. Now, having signed a short-term contract until January at Steve Bruce’s Blackpool — his first club since being released by Preston North End in June 2023 — he is adamant he can return to the highest level.
“Obviously, I’ve got lots of friends in football. When I was watching them and not at a team, it felt strange,” he tells The Athletic. “That made me miss it.
“I went straight into full-time football after Year 11, so I’ve been doing that about 10 years straight non-stop. I was sort of in a bubble doing that every day but when I’ve come out of there and I’ve seen it from a different perspective, I’ve realised how much I actually love football.”
Onomah was persuaded to find a club by his closest friends in football — Kyle Walker-Peters, Dominic Solanke, Jake Clarke-Salter and Tosin Adarabioyo — who were insistent he did not let his talent go to waste.
He said their support was invaluable during his spell on the sidelines. “They were encouraging me to just go anywhere and get back playing,” he says.
But how does a player who has been touted for such greatness cope with being left in the football wilderness?
“At the start it was about finding the right club,” Onomah says. “After Preston, I went to Stoke to train. They ended up offering me a contract, but I didn’t feel like it was the right move for me. I then had some issues with my agent and after that it was just some personal issues and that sort of prolonged throughout the season. And then it was summer and I was like, ‘I need to get back playing football again because I’ve missed it’.”
Onomah said he worked hard to stay fit with the help of a close friend who is a personal trainer and by using the athletics centre at Lee Valley, close to where he grew up in Enfield, north London.
“I knew I had to maintain some sort of fitness and I couldn’t go at least five or six days without doing something,” he says.
There must have been moments when he felt lonely and struggled to stay self-motivated.
“The people I was working with at the time were all very good at switching up the scenery, the sessions I did, or where I was training, so I wouldn’t fall into that trap,” he says. “But it was tough. Just going and training by yourself is not the same as being in a team.”
Onomah says he was never worried about falling out of football altogether and that his chance at Blackpool came about after a conversation with their sporting director David Downes, who he knew from his time at Aston Villa and Sheffield Wednesday.
At Blackpool, he has been reunited with Bruce for the third time in his career.
“The fan in me came out (when I arrived at Blackpool), it’s a good atmosphere and I just want to get on the pitch as soon as possible,” he says.
Blackpool is Onomah’s sixth club in a career which began at Tottenham, his home town team who he first joined as an eight-year-old.
He was regarded as one of the most gifted players in the academy — with quick feet, elegant balance and eye-catching dribbling — and was handed his senior debut aged 17 under Mauricio Pochettino.
After impressing in his first start for Spurs, a Europa League tie at home to Monaco in December 2015, Pochettino told reporters he was “a special boy, a special player” and said there it was “impossible to set a limit” on what he could achieve. He would make only 13 Premier League appearances for the club before leaving for Fulham in 2019.
So what happened?
“I would say at the time, in my late teens, I wasn’t as focused,” he says. “There were little distractions around that time, I just moved out by myself.”
“If I was talking to my younger self I’d say, ‘There’s plenty of time to do all of that, just right now this is prime time, this is your learning stage, just focus on that. Listen to the older pros around you and when your chance comes, don’t go through the motions, you’ve got to take it’.”
Although Onomah struggled to force his way into the Tottenham side, he played a key role in the England Under-20s’ World Cup success in 2017. He played the full match in the final against Venezuela alongside the likes of Solanke, Walker-Peters, Ademola Lookman and Fikayo Tomori.
Solanke joined Spurs from Bournemouth this summer in a deal worth up to £65million, and has now earned an England recall. Onomah feels pride at seeing his friend doing so well at his boyhood club.
“As a friend, there’s no envy there, I’m just happy for him,” he says.
At Tottenham, Onomah said he owed a lot to Pochettino, who takes charge of his first game as manager of the United States men’s national team on Sunday.
“I could see that he really wanted to push me,” he said. “He’s relentless. You work hard under him. He’s a good guy, a good tactician. He’s not just a good manager, he’s a good person off the pitch as well. He was like a father figure.”
Struggling for game time at Spurs, Onomah was sent out on loan. There was a spell in the Championship under Bruce at Aston Villa, which ended in heartbreak in the 2018 play-off final but at least taught him more about the physical side of the game.
That summer, media reports in the UK linked him with a permanent move to Villa as a makeweight in Tottenham’s attempts to sign Jack Grealish — not that Onomah was aware of any concrete interest.
“I was never told about it,” he says. “The season after (the loan) there were some talks that Steve Bruce wanted me. It was news to me that I was going to trade in with Jack Grealish.”
Shortly after that, Onomah was out on loan again, this time to Sheffield Wednesday, then in the Championship, and where he was joined again by Bruce for the second half of the season. By that stage, however, Onomah’s campaign had been derailed by a knee injury.
From there, he signed permanently for Fulham as part of the £25million transfer that saw Ryan Sessegnon join Spurs. He initially worked under Scott Parker, a familiar face from his time at Tottenham.
At Fulham, there were flashes of brilliance — such as his magnificent solo goal in their play-off semi-final win over Cardiff City on the way to promotion in 2020 — but there were further niggles and he lost his starting place when Marco Silva replaced Parker. He still achieved a further promotion in the 2021-22 season before departing in January 2023.
After five months at Preston, where he was primarily used as an impact sub by Ryan Lowe, he has now dropped down to League One as he looks to resurrect his career under a manager he knows well in Bruce.
“He keeps following me!” Onomah laughs. “I enjoy working with him. You sense his aura around the place. He’s a man with a wealth of experience. He understands the game, his intelligence, I’m always learning off him and he’s a real people’s person. He’s also someone I see as a father figure.”
Under Bruce’s steady guidance, does he feel confident he can work his way back up and reach his former heights?
“Yes, 100 per cent,” he replied. “I believe in myself. I’m always someone that’s believed in my ability. It’s just a case of just getting match-fit again and then who knows what can happen?
“With football, it’s never too late. I played at the highest level, but I’m 27 and I still have a lot to offer. I can obviously still get there and Blackpool have given me an opportunity to get back playing football.
“I’ve got to concentrate on that first and get into the rhythm of things. Football’s a crazy sport, anything could happen. It’s never a case of having regrets in the past, more so living in the moment and expecting big things for the future.”
(Top photo: Onomah on signing for Blackpool. Blackpool FC)