To the home stretch of the Danny Rose saga we go, with talks between the player and Mauricio Pochettino scheduled for Wednesday. The wind appears to be blowing in the direction of a departure, but Tottenham will be loath to lose both of their first-choice full-backs in the same summer, so could yet be tempted into a reconciliation.
The argument for keeping Rose is self-evident, but purely football-related. He plays his position with an aggression rarely shown by Ben Davies and is arguably the finest athlete in the Spurs squad. Without the width Rose brings to the side, Pochettino’s men lack thrust - which will prove particularly inhibiting at Wembley.
Clearly, there’s a sound sporting argument for overlooking the events of the past two weeks and forging an uneasy truce for the sake of the current season at least. Rose makes Tottenham better - there’s no arguing with that - and over any length of time performance tends to carry the greater weight.
The difficulty, though, is in believing that to still be true. Rose’s interview with The Sun was calculated. The substance and detail of what was said would have been planned and plotted beforehand and the timing of publication, so obviously intended to cause the most damage to his team-mates and manager, will have been pre-agreed.
In the days following his revelations, Rose garnered no little sympathy. In a relative sense he is underpaid and he was right to be alarmed by the club’s transfer inertia - in effect, he was only echoing the sentiments of a fan base who had been chanting the same frustration across social media.
The difference, though, lay in the intent. Irrespective of his own account of events, Rose owes his current place in the game - in part - to Pochettino and his fellow first-teamers. He is a current England international by virtue of the accommodating protections which have been built into the Tottenham formation and is in a place to command a greater salary because of the collective performance of the side.
There’s nothing unusual in that - it’s not a set of circumstances unique to Rose. It does, however, underline the egregiousness of his friendly fire. In private, players are entitled to look after their own interests and mobilise their agents as they see fit, but doing so in public - and using the antagonistic properties of The Sun to do so - always creates a series of irreparable fractures. Between the player and supporters, between the player and his manager and, sometimes, even between the player and the rest of the team.
Rose knew that. He has worked with Pochettino for long enough to anticipate what his response was likely to be and, more pertinently, has witnessed the consequences of this kind of behaviour first-hand. He saw Andros Townsend forcibly exiled for something more minor and Nabil Bentaleb brutally jettisoned after a contractual stand-off, and will therefore have been fully aware of the drama he was potentially creating.
And he did it anyway.
Maintaining discipline in football clubs is a delicate business. Managers have to be strong enough to retain control without become over-zealous; they’re required to consistently find the mid-point of a shifting equilibrium. At Tottenham, that’s a more stable situation: Pochettino rules.
When a player crosses him, he’s finished - irrespective of his potential value to the team. It’s a bold approach in football, particularly with youngsters who are often prone to following bad advice and making poor decisions, but it’s been proven to work. Needless to say, it promotes a culture of greater worth than any individual and it must be protected at all costs.
And the longer that’s dwelt upon, the more obvious it becomes that Rose must be sold without any further delay.
Spurs are currently caught fighting short-term battles within their longer term objectives. Remaining in the Champions League this season is obviously important, but the greater aim is to enter new White Hart Lane in a state of organisational good health. Pochettino must still be at the club, his authority over his squad must remain intact. Prior to what they were before his arrival, when politicised backroom staff cheerfully leaked information to the press, Spurs are now an island. There’s trust, there’s respect and Rose’s actions are a threat to those tenets. Which, albeit in a tenuous way, makes him a threat to their future too.
That can’t be the case. A 27-year-old full-back with one or two years of his physical prime remaining cannot be allowed to salt the earth. He’s a good footballer - an extremely good one - but there will always be more of those.
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