LOOK beyond the cynicism – the notion that Daniel Levy’s stewardship of Tottenham Hotspur is a little too much about annual revenues and too little about gatecrashing the top four – and you might be a bit surprised about what’s coming together at White Hart Lane in season two of the Mauricio Pochettino era. What strikes you is that this is a side brimming with youth.

Pochettino has used 21 outfield players in the league this season. The oldest – Mousa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen – are 28. Toby Alderweireld and Nacer Chadli are 26 and everybody else is 25 or younger. This is a team that could easily be together for the next five years, Levy – and his penchant to sell big – permitting.

And that’s important for a manager who lives by two mantras: athleticism and cohesion, of the kind that come from repeated and intense tactical work on the training ground. It’s also the sort of approach that works best when you have young, pliable players. In that sense, he suits Levy perfectly and the squad are responding.

Erik Lamela, after two seasons of hiccups, is growing game by game and has added a prodigious workrate to go with his superb, if intermittent, skills. Dele Alli, at 19, has made the leap from League One to the England side without missing a beat.

Alderweireld has joined his Belgium team-mate Vertonghen at the heart of the defence, reprising a relationship that lasted eight years, from their time together in the Ajax youth set up until Vertonghen left in 2012. The likes of Ben Davies and Eric Dier look to be living up to their potential after rollercoaster debut campaigns.

Pochettino has even found a way to fit Christian Eriksen into the mix. The Dane’s technical ability and creativity far outweigh his athletic shortcomings and are evidence the Argentine is more pragmatic than he is sometimes given credit for.

And then there’s Harry Kane. At times last year he carried the side, a bit like Gareth Bale the previous two seasons (relax: I said “a bit”... only a bit). This season he’s more

added-value than indispensable and that’s a good thing. Nobody expected him to continue at 2014-15 levels but he remains an invaluable offensive outlet.

What strikes you about Tottenham, though, is the nature of the players assembled and what, to some, could end up being a weakness. It’s a squad of choir boys, of good eggs, of wide-eyed pieces of clay to be moulded.

And it’s by design. Since Pochettino’s arrival, the likes of Younes Kaboul, Vlad Chiriches, Emmanuel Adebayor and Roberto Soldado have left the club. Not troublemakers necessarily, but veterans and tough guys, players who maybe did not always toe the line.

Federico Fazio and Andros Townsend, two others who won’t be mistaken for boy scouts any time soon, have combined for 67 minutes of Premier League action. That’s not a coincidence either.

For better or worse, there are no veterans with big personalities of the kind that can question the manager’s authority (bad) or rally the dressing room (good). In fact, it’s not entirely dissimilar to the charge brought against Spurs’ opponents today. Arsenal’s ills in recent years have been put down in some quarters to a lack of leadership and toughness. And perhaps it’s also not happenstance that they are managed by a guy Pochettino could be in 20 years' time and, like him, prefers to work with young men who follow orders rather than seasoned pros who challenge them.

THERE are so many twists and turns in the bizarre story of Karim Benzema, his France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena and the mysterious sex tape involving the latter that it’s difficult to make sense of any of it.

What we do know is that back in June police began investigating Valbuena and whether he was being blackmailed over a sex video. The inquiry spread to include Djibril Cisse – who was quickly deemed to have nothing to do with the affair – and, last week, Benzema. The Real Madrid striker, who originally came forward to testify as a witness on Valbuena’s behalf, finds himself charged with being part of the blackmail plot itself. He spent last Wednesday night in prison and has been barred from contacting Valbuena.

The most accredited theory doing the rounds in French media is that Valbuena was being blackmailed by a friend of Benzema and the striker intervened as a result. Whether he did so to try and mediate or whether he did so to put further pressure on Valbuena is what investigators are trying to establish.

For his part, Valbuena says Benzema is innocent and, while he can have no contact with him, he made it a point to change his Facebook page to one depicting the two of them together in an embrace.

What does appear extraordinary is that Real Madrid – who ought to have known about all this in the summer – thought it would be a good idea to go into the season with no cover for Benzema. Maybe clubs aren’t quite as well-informed about their employees as we thought.

REMI Garde makes his debut today on the Aston Villa bench against high-flying Manchester United. In some quarters, he’s already doomed. He’s been depicted as someone who was hired for two reasons.

The first is that he is a former Arsenal player – he was one of Arsene Wenger’s first signings back in 1996 – and that matters on a team whose chief executive, Tom Fox, and director of football, Henrik Almstad, both came over from Arsenal.

The other is that he’s French, at a club supposedly teeming with Francophones and, unlike Tim Sherwood, will actually be to communicate with his players. As ever, it’s a bit of a lazy characterisation.

Garde may have spent three seasons at Arsenal in the 1990s, but his formative years as a coach were at Lyon, where he remained from 2003 to 2014, covering a number of roles, managing the club to three top five finishes and overseeing one of the better academies in Europe.

As for the Francophone contingent, it’s somewhat exaggerated. There are two Frenchmen – Jordan Veretout and Jordan Amavi – and one Senegalese in Villa’s ranks. Jordan Ayew was born and raised in France, but he’s Ghanaian and they speak English there.

Garde will sink or swim by how well he coaches his players. Language and pedigree have little to do with it.