Tottenham vs Crystal Palace: Mauricio Pochettino muses 'hard decisions' ahead of Andros Townsend return

Townsend now plays for Crystal Palace but his January departure for Newcastle United remains fresh in the memory

Mauricio Pochettino cut Andros Townsend adrift last season (Getty)

Andros Townsend will return to White Hart Lane on Saturday for the first time since Mauricio Pochettino publicly ended his Tottenham career last November.

Townsend now plays for Crystal Palace but his January departure for Newcastle United remains fresh in the memory. Pochettino, who rarely talks about individual players in press conferences, told the cameras that Townsend “needed to learn about football, behaviour and discipline”, after he had scuffled with a Tottenham fitness coach. Townsend was fined, suspended from the first team and never played another minute for Spurs.

Pochettino tried to brush off the incident at his press conference this week as “not about personal things”, and a “professional decision”. While there were football reasons for preferring other wide players to Townsend, the way Pochettino froze Townsend out still pointed to a brutal ruthlessness in the Argentine coach.

Having built the best Spurs team in a generation Pochettino has earned the right to deal with his players however he wants. Few would quibble with his decision to move on Aaron Lennon, Etienne Capoue, Younes Kaboul, Emmanuel Adebayor or Benoit Assou-Ekotto. This summer there is a similar situation with Nabil Bentaleb, excluded from Pochettino’s plans, training with the Under-21s while trying to find a new club. But Pochettino’s public response is the same: this is not personal, it’s strictly business.

“I think that football is full of hard decisions,” shrugged Pochettino when asked about Townsend. “It is not about personal things or issues. We spent nearly two years together here and had a good relationship. We took a professional decision. It is not an issue. We split our ways and nothing happened.”

Townsend had only been on the fringes of Pochettino’s plans last season, starting just three games: FK Qarabag, Anderlecht, and a Capital One Cup game against Arsenal. With just three brief substitute appearances in the league, it was clear that he had slipped down the pecking order. That frustration eventually bubbled over when Townsend was an unused sub in a routine home win over Aston Villa and scuffled with coach Nathan Gardiner, who had asked him to warm down.

Pochettino’s recollections of the incident this week were slightly rose-tinted. He said that Townsend wanted to play more, which he did, but downplayed the fallout from the Gardiner confrontation as just “a problem during one week”.

"As a manager, you take a lot of decisions every day,” Pochettino explained. “If a player is not happy because they want to play more, then they try and find another way to try and play. This is the difficult thing with football. Basketball is different, you can change every two minutes and everyone is happy. Football is different.”

Few would dispute Pochettino’s decision to prefer Lamela to Townsend. Since Lamela became first-choice early last season he has blossomed into a powerful decisive player, not just creating and scoring goals with his elite quality but leading Spurs’ pressing with tenacious athleticism. He is a different level of player from Townsend and Pochettino explained how Spurs’ record signing is now playing his best football.

“Erik needs to feel free on the pitch,” Pochettino said. “Erik is not a player that you need to put in a box, you play here, you do this and that. He needs to feel free in his mind and move freely. So we need to work a lot in the team to try to synchronise the movement. If not it's difficult to move altogether and create space and play like a team. He needs to play with freedom on the pitch.”

Last year was Lamela’s best at Spurs but Pochettino hopes for even more this year. “He is always open, he's an energetic player, he shows passion in every training session,” Pochettino said. “He loves football, which he shows every day. He's desperate to run, to play, to take the ball, and that's a good thing.”

Lamela, ultimately, is more of a Pochettino player than Townsend. Not because of their shared nationality, but because Lamela is more athletic, more flexible and more incisive than Townsend is. And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was Townsend’s own behaviour, more than anything, that ended his Spurs career.

“Discipline is important,” explained Pochettino, speaking generally. “It is important that all players want to be part of the team, and to play for the team. It is very important to show respect for everyone at the club. That is one of the principle things for me.”

Townsend is living proof of what happens to a player who Pochettino decides against. This season’s example is Nabil Bentaleb. The Algerian international spent last season working hard to get fit but when he returned for pre-season he was told that he was not part of Pochettino’s plans and not part of the squad for the trip to Australia. He is now training with the Under-21s while he tries to find a club willing to pay Tottenham’s asking price of at least £10million. So far there is no serious interest in him.

Pochettino insisted that Bentaleb is with the under-21s because he wants to leave, rather than the other way around. “He is not with the first team, because he wanted to leave,” Pochettino said. “I explained that if he wanted to leave, I would say ok. He is trying to try to find a place away from Tottenham. The rule is very clear: if you are not part of my plans, why are you training with us? He understands very well.”

Pochettino pointed to the fact that he still sees Bentaleb regularly and there is no issue between the two. “We share the changing room and the restaurants all together, it is not a big issue, not a problem,” he said. “Sometimes it looks like a big, big issue, but it is very normal in football.” Never personal, strictly business.