In the Summer of 2002, Dean Marney, a young starlet seen by scouts while playing for Queen’s Park Rangers was signed by Tottenham Hotspur manager Glen Hoddle.
Tottenham Hotspur Football club, or Spurs as known by its supporters is a London based club with a huge fan base. There are three teams in the club. First team, reserves and under 18’s.
Dean had been placed in the reserves for assistant manager Chris Haughton to watch him play with the other reserve lad’s week in week out.
Dean became a keen admirer of his manager Glen Hoddle and they got along really well. In May 2003, Tottenham faced West Ham in the local London derby. This is a big fixture for both teams and Spurs would need there best team out there. Dean had been named in the squad for Saturday until admitting on Friday he had a sore back and didn’t want to risk it. They ended up winning 2-1.
Dean played across the midfield, pushing up into a very attacking role. There was a lot of competition for that position. He had to compete with Pedro Mendes, Michael Carrick, Michael Brown and Sean Davis if he even had a chance of getting in.
After his first year of the 2002-2003 season in the reserves, Dean was losing confidence in his own abilities. He had talks with Glen about a possible loan transfer to a lower division club to gain first team experience. Glen agreed, and at the same time seeing that this young lad was keen to play week in week out and would do anything to get into the Spurs first team. Dean left for 5 months to First Division team Q.P.R. He played 18 games for them, scoring 8 goals, 7 assist’s, and being named first division player of month 3 times.
But during his spell at Q.P.R, manager Glen Hoddle was sacked due to the first team dropping down to 14th in the league. New manager Jacques Santini was a French bloke, who had just been sacked from the French national team. He didn’t speak good English, he wasn’t used to the English style of football and he was not a keen admirer of Dean. So he was shipped off to Millwall for 3 months, and in that time he made 11 appearances, scoring 6 goals, 9 assist’s.
Jacques Santini lasted 13 games in charge of Tottenham before being sacked.