Sam Allardyce shares his surprise at Archie Gray | OneFootball

Back in the summer, Tottenham Hotspur moved to bring in highly rated Leeds United teenager Archie Gray, for over £30 million pounds. Unfortunately for the 18-year old, he has been played pretty much everywhere except his actual position - as a central midfielder.

Sam Allardyce gives his thoughts on Archie Gray at Spurs

On his No Tippy Tappy Football podcast, former Leeds manager Sam Allardyce has explained what has really surpised him about Gray's time in North London so far: "You’ve got to say this by the way, not in the memory of man would I ever have seen that lad playing centre-half.

Not with anything in my time as a manager would I have thought, ‘is he playing centre-half?!' Eddie [Gray, Archie's father and Leeds legend] still works at Leeds United and he’s a fantastic advocate for the club, a fantastic guy. He’d be gutted that they sold him [Archie].

It was a good move for him as a lad going to Tottenham. Obviously, Leeds needed the money but another Gray gracing the football pitch is great to see.”

Current Salford United manager, Karl Robinson - who was Allardyce's assistant manager during their brief time together at Leeds, added his thoughts to the conversation: "He [Gray] was a lot younger when we were there [last four games of the 22/23 Premier League season] but you could see he was technically very good,” he said.

“I never saw him playing where he’s currently playing for Spurs but it shows you his personality, because his family is in the game, that he’d happily play in any position.

He’s everything I love about football. He just wants to play, and it doesn’t matter where.”

At just 15 years old, Marcelo Bielsa named Gray in a match day squad for a home game against Arsenal. During his first two games in charge of Leeds, Sam Allardyce also named Gray in the match day squad, for games against Manchester City and Newcastle United.

Whilst all said on the pod is true, and certainly a real testament to Gray. You just really, really, cannot wait to see him playing in midfield. If he is this mature in defence, how good will he be in midfield. Even though he is a central midfielder, just seeing him as a defensive midfielder at this point would be nice. All of this experience in defence will leave him better equipped to playing as a six than he otherwise would have been.

He is also no less of a six than Rodrigo Bentancur and Yves Bissouma. He would almost certainly have better awareness than the latter. He is also just as capable on the ball. Let's see. This will hopefully all be over soon.