Tottenham Hotspur appeared taken aback to learn yesterday that Djed Spence’s season-long loan at Leeds United would be ending midway through the campaign. The reason for the transfer was not mentioned in any official remarks from Tottenham Hotspur or Leeds, however Leeds stated manager Daniel Farke would elaborate at his news conference this coming weekend before their FA Cup match against Peterborough.

Now that the press conference has taken place, Farke has given some very strong indications even though he did not state clearly why he allowed Djed to return to his home club.

We’ve examined the first half of the season, the first few months, and particularly the impressions during the festive periods after some time has passed since the New Year’s game. Naturally, judgements made in January are not made with the short term in mind. It seems more like you’re thinking about circumstances even weeks or months in advance, but we also wanted to consider the festive period’s impressions. After that, there was time to exchange ideas and have discussions about the many topics. We decided that Djed’s loan would be terminated, and he would go back to Tottenham. We appreciate him spending time with us.

We truly wish him the best because he’s a cool kid with a really wonderful heart and a player with a lot of potential. However, occasionally you have to make a choice and carry out this action.

“As Djed is currently back at Tottenham, I don’t want to talk about him too much at this time, and I completely respect him as their player. As you can see, we came here in the summer to instill new ideals and build a new culture within the team. Whether a player is on loan or a permanent basis, we have expectations for him, and these expectations are significant in a number of ways.

“The player’s potential and quality are obviously important, but so are his professionalism, discipline, workload both on and off the pitch, and soft skills. It also helps to paint a picture of him if he is positive, committed, a good fit for the team, and interested in these subjects.

“And we decided, okay, this is the player we want in our group and to represent Leeds Leeds United. We are pretty picky in this topic, so we have very high demands and don’t differentiate between loan players and permanent players.”

Hurt. Although Farke doesn’t explicitly state that Djed Spence is a problem—which, to be honest, I kind of expected—he does paint a fairly vivid picture, doesn’t he? Farke doesn’t mince words, you know. You may recall that a few years ago, while he was managing Norwich City, Marcus Edwards had a terrible loan that ultimately proved to be the last straw in his Tottenham career. Farke wasn’t shy in expressing his opinions on Edwards’ demeanour and flaws. Noteworthy is the fact that Edwards appears to have turned around his career in Portugal and is once again being linked to the Premier League (although not with Spurs). Young athletes occasionally only need to mature a little.

Nevertheless, it’s not a good sign when a manager mentions professionalism, discipline, and workload during a press conference as some of the reasons for allowing a loan player to leave six months earlier than his contract called for. It’s therefore not too hard to connect the dots that Farke helpfully set out for us in a very straight line, even though he didn’t explicitly say so.

In the meantime, Sami Mokbel—the Daily Mail’s lone reliable reporter—writes that Tottenham has promptly placed Spence on the transfer list, so validating the original reason Ange Postecoglou leased Spence away.

This is essentially just depressing. It is disheartening that Djed seems to have wrecked what could have been a fantastic opportunity, and sorry that it has come to this.