Ledley King believes it's important for Tottenham to keep Cristian Romero at the club this summer as Son Heung-min makes his way to Los Angeles and has heard some good things about Thomas Frank behind the scenes at the club.
The Argentine has been linked with a move away from Spurs as it reaches the final two years of the vice-captain's contract at the north London outfit. Tottenham skipper Son Heung-min is joining LAFC for a MLS-record fee of more than £20million after asking to leave the club.
football.londonreported last week that when new head coach Thomas Frank was first appointed he called all of the senior players in the club and only Son told him he wanted to leave Spurs. Romero was previously linked with a move to Atletico Madrid but has thus far shown no desire to push for a move out of the club.
While on the club's tour to Asia, where Romero impressed in games against Arsenal and Newcastle, King said it was vital that Tottenham keep their World Cup and two-time Copa America-winning centre-back.
"It's important, it's always important [to keep a winner]. During my period, I would say it was very difficult to keep players. Whenever you felt like you were building on something, we seemed to lose one or two of your best players, and it makes it very difficult," the former Spurs skipper told football.london.
"So yeah, you always want to keep your best players, but again, it's something that it is not easy to do, but of course as a football club we never want to sell our best players, that's for sure."
The 44-year-old added: "I think Romero is brilliant. I think the partnership between him and Micky van de Ven, it's a great fit. They're different in their styles, but that works well. Also there's some young talent coming through and Kevin Danso coming in last season and when he had to play, he looked very good as well, so I do feel that we're quite strong in that central defensive area.
"Ben Davies comes in as well when he has to in difficult circumstances again and never lets the team down. So I think we're quite strong in that position at the moment."
King knows a thing or two about being a centre-back and Tottenham added two young ones this summer in 18-year-old Croatian Luka Vuskovic, who is set to go out on loan, and 20-year-old Japan international Kota Takai.
"The little I've seen, I've been impressed but for any young players, it's about learning as much as you can, taking on board what the coaching staff are trying to teach, learning from the players around you," he said.
"It takes time for young players, it can be frustrating at times when you want to play or you want more minutes, but you have to be patient and make sure that you're working hard every day and waiting for an opportunity to come and when that opportunity does come, you have to be ready to take that.
"We've got a lot of young players, excellent young players throughout the squad, in some of the forward areas as well as midfield, throughout the squad we're very strong with young players."
This has been a summer of change at Spurs with Ange Postecoglou sacked after winning the Europa League, the club's first trophy in 17 years, but also overseeing a 17th-place finish in the Premier League. In came Frank for another new era at the north London club.
"It was a difficult season last season. Mainly due to injuries, but I mean ultimately it wasn't a good enough league campaign, but full credit to the players and Ange, they stuck at it right to the end. They still saw that they could turn the season around and make it a good one," he said.
"To be able to keep that motivation right to the end, keep your eye on the ball, and pull off the win at the end, you have to give great credit to Ange and he'll be forever in the history books for what he's achieved at the club. But in football, things change very quickly and after that success, a new manager comes in. The players have to get on with it and deal with it very quickly and I sense excitement.
"We know that Thomas is a proven Premier League manager over a number of years. I can see the players are looking forward to learning his philosophies and getting the season underway."
The centre-back added: "I'm sure it would have been a difficult decision. The chairman and the club will only move in the best interests of the football club and how we feel that we can improve and move forward. I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision, but Thomas Frank is a top class manager and we believe that we have a capable squad that should be doing much better in the league.
"We have players now that have got over the line of actually winning a trophy, especially for the young players that puts them in really good stead moving forward, just having that belief that they can go over the line. It's something that is important to get as early as possible.
"We have a number of young players that have have done that now. I'm looking forward to not just this season, but what the future brings."
So what will Thomas Frank's Tottenham Hotspur look like?
"It'll be interesting to see. I think he likes pressing high, likes high energy, but at the same time, I think he's quite sensible in his philosophy," said King. "I don't think he'd be afraid to change things tactically if need be, but what I've sensed so far is that he's someone who's going to put his arm around players and have a chat with them.
"I sense a real closeness between him and his coaching staff, and also just trying to connect everyone at the club and make them feel comfortable, which is what you need for success. To build on something you want everyone at the football club to be involved, to be engaged and to feel that we were aiming for success altogether and not just on the football pitch side of things and I sense that he's really trying to do that.
"I've spoken to some people who've said that [he's trying to connect everyone], they've told me that. It's been meetings with everyone at the club together, talking about having that connection as a team, as a club, moving forward, but also just me seeing, watching how he carries himself, how he interacts with everyone, it's something that I've noticed as well.
"I always think it's an important ingredient, when you want to build something, make it successful is to allow everyone to feel part of it and I can sense that he's really trying to bring that together."
Frank has two coaches on his staff that King knows well in Matt Wells and Justin Cochrane, who have both worked within Tottenham's academy.
"I think it's something that's always important [to keep that Spurs connection]. Wellsy and Justin know the club really, really well. They'll know a lot of the young players that are trying to make that step up into the first team squad, and I think it's important for them to have that knowledge to give to the manager," said the former England international.
"When the new manager comes in, it's very difficult to to learn about all your players at once, so I'm sure slowly but surely they will drip feed the manager information on some of the young players that have a bright future ahead of them.
"I've always felt it's important to have that connection, someone who knows the club really well, just to help the manager coming in. So I think it's a great fit."
So will King ever return to coaching to get his badges?
"It's always in my head, it's always there. I'm always picking up things, I spoke to Justin yesterday, just trying to just pick at his brain a little bit, to find out about the specific style of how we're going to play and what the manager really looks for and what he wants from his team and stuff like that and you know, it's always there, it's always going around in my head," he said.
"But at the moment, I enjoy doing what I'm doing. I've always said you have to be obsessed with the coaching style. I've always said I'm never going to go into it unless I'm fully ready, prepared, I can't go in 50-50 in my head, so whether that comes, I'm still not sure. Time's probably running out each year, but I'm a footballer at heart and that side of it, I suppose it'll always kind of tick away a bit at me."
