Charlton Athletic pulled a blinder with £3m transfer agreement with Spurs | OneFootball

When Charlton Athletic signed Luke Young for £3m from Spurs in 2001, they found themselves an absolute gem.

For a young player who's come through the academy at a big club, the decision to have to leave can be a heart-wrenching one. To take what might be perceived as a "step down" could feel like failure, or an admission of defeat.

But sometimes it can be the making of a player, and this is what happened in the case of Luke Young and his £3 million transfer from Spurs to Charlton Athletic in 2001.

Young was originally one of Tottenham's own

Born in the nearby new town of Harlow in Essex in 1979, Young was a local lad when he first signed professional terms with Tottenham in 1997.

He made his debut for them against West Ham United in November 1998 and was an unused substitute the following March when Spurs beat Leicester City to win the League Cup.

But over the seasons that followed, Young found it difficult to tie down a place in the first team. Over the first three seasons of his professional career at White Hart Lane he only played 58 times in the Premier League for Spurs, just under half of their matches.

Charlton gave Young the chance he didn't have at Spurs

In July 2001, Charlton made their offer, and the by this time 22-year-old crossed London in a £3m deal, with Charlton agreeing to pay further sums of £250,000 at the end of each of the following four seasons, providing they could retain their Premier League status.

The club had been promoted into the Premier League a year earlier and their first season back had gone well, with Alan Curbishley taking them to ninth in the table. He made his debut for the Addicks on the 18th August 2001 against Everton.

Charlton could offer Young the one thing that Spurs couldn't; regular first-team football. He made 34 appearances in the Premier League in his first season with the club, though as a defender it took him three years and just over 100 games to score his first goal for the club, which he finally managed against Aston Villa in August 2004.

Young helped to give Charlton the defensive stability they needed

Over the next five years, Young's contribution as a full-back helped to give Charlton the defensive stability they needed to keep themselves away from a relegation battle. Over this period, they didn't finish below 14th in the Premier League or concede more than 58 goals in a season.

The high point of this five-year period was the 2003/04 season, when the team lost just two Premier League matches between the end of September and the middle of January. They got to fourth place and a possible Champions League spot as late as the middle of March, only to tail off and finish the season in seventh, three points off a place in the following season's UEFA Cup.

Curbishley leaves and Young follows the following year

Charlton were rocked by the news that Curbishley was not to renew his contract beyond the end of the 2005/06 season, and his departure proved to mark the beginning of the end of the club's stay in the Premier League.

Under the managership of Iain Dowie, Les Reed and Alan Pardew, as the club struggled to fill the void left by Curbishley's departure, the Addicks only spent five weeks outside the relegation places all season and ended up going down in 19th place, four points from safety. They haven't played in the top flight since.

With Young having made his England debut in May 2005, staying in the Premier League was a necessity, and in the summer of 2007 he left The Valley to go to Middlesbrough, and would go on to play for Aston Villa and Queens Park Rangers before retiring in 2014.

However, it's at Charlton that he's most fondly remembered, as part of a team that defied expectations and nearly made it all the way into Europe. For supporters of a club now plying their trade two divisions lower, he's a reminder of considerably happier days and an inspired bit of business.