Jack Clarke has admitted trying to copy his former Tottenham team-mates and told football.london he believes the lessons learned from various Spurs managers have helped him become the young star he is now.

The 22-year-old has been a revelation for Sunderland in the Championship this season, scoring nine goals in 16 matches from the left wing. The previous season he racked up 11 goals and 14 assists in helping the Black Cats reach the play-offs and the club rejected a string of bids from Burnley in the summer with Vincent Kompany looking to take Clarke up to the Premier League with them.

Clarke moved from Spurs to Sunderland in the summer of 2022 on a permanent deal after having been on loan there for half a season, helping them get promoted to the Championship.

Previously he had spent three years at Tottenham, working under Mauricio Pochettino, Jose Mourinho, Ryan Mason and Antonio Conte in between loans to Leeds, QPR, Stoke and Sunderland. He did not make a single Premier League appearance for the club, but did make two appearances for Spurs in the Europa League, one in the Europa Conference League qualifying stage and one in the FA Cup.

Speaking to football.london through SkyBet, Clarke admitted that while it was an unusual period of his career, he just tried to mimic everything the club's three top stars, in particular, did in order to improve himself.

"It was a bit of a strange time. I learnt under a lot of different coaches, there were a lot of players coming in and out, it was a transitional period for the club," he said.

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"Just being in the building every single day, with top players like Heung-min Son, Harry Kane, even Gareth Bale for a period of time. They are the players you aspire to be when you’re a kid – just sharing the training pitch with them and how they go about their day-to-day business, you can’t help but be in awe of it, you had to apply yourself, learning from coaches at the top level.

"I wasn’t playing every day, but I had to use that timeframe to improve, and I tried to improve by almost mimicking these top players every single day."

Having worked with so many different managers within such a relatively short spell at the club, did any of them leave their mark on the young winger?

"There were a lot of top managers. They all wanted different things – all managers in this day and age play a different style of football, and you have to be adaptable," said Clarke.

"You can only use it to learn – there’s a reason they are top coaches, and there’s a reason top players are there. You have to be a sponge and absorb everything – I tried to do that to the best of my ability.

"Every day I went into training, I applied myself and tried to get better – I just didn’t have the platform to showcase that. I still use a lot of what I learnt there to this day, and maybe that’s why I’m playing well."