Tottenham’s Korean winger (no, not that Korean winger, he left last summer, the other one) is heading back out on loan, and to a familiar location to Tottenham fans. Sacha Tavolieri is reporting that Yang Min-hyeok is heading to Belgium to play at Westerlo on loan for the season.
Yang got quite a few minutes of preseason action this summer, but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. He notably got into some excellent scoring positions in the box in matches against Sydney and Chelsea, but was let down by his finishing. Still, there’s some promise there and a loan feels like a good outcome since he’s unlikely to get many first team minutes at Spurs this season.
Westerlo is a club that has a good relationship with Spurs — the last guy who went there, Luka Vuskovic, excelled and then went on to excel in the Bundesliga. It appears to be a club that is adept at developing players, and hopefully Minhyeok can make a good impact there. Minhyeok has yet to make a first team appearance with Spurs and has spent the past 18 months on loan at Coventry, Stoke City, Portsmouth, and QPR. He looked decent at Stoke, but the loan to Coventry, who were in a title race, turned out to be a disastrous move as Frank Lampard barely played him at all.
I like Yang and want him to succeed but he’s at the point now where he’s going to have to start making an impact SOMEWHERE if he wants a shot at cracking Spurs’ first team. He’s still only 20 so there’s some time, but it feels like he hasn’t hit the ground running anywhere he’s been so far, so hopefully he can start to establish himself and get some confidence in Belgium.