Njie, Pritchard stay or go?

TRANSFER TALK

There is debate raging as to whether we should sell Clinton Njie or not and really it depends upon the level of your ambition.

Now we are a top four side, we are a Champion League team and we need to stay at that level, rather than slip back to best of the rest. The teams around us are all buying, which you assume means improvement. We have made purchases, the proven Premier League Vivtor Wanyama and highly promising striker Vincent Janssen.

The question though, surrounds players like Alex Pritchard, Tom Carroll and Clinton Njie. They are all taking squad places so how long to you keep players who haven't yet performed? One school of thought says they haven't been given a chance, but that is nonsense because they train every day and it is on the training ground they have to show Pochettino they are worth a place. That means performing better than those in your spot and taking your chance when you get it, not this I need a run of games rubbish.

If you can't perform when you get a chance then you don't have it mentally and if you don't have that you shouldn't have a future at Tottenham. mentality id the be all and end all, it controls what you do, it controls your motivation, it controls your output.

We have moved on since we signed Erik Lamela and kept hold of him, not that we could have sold him for any fee. Now, if we want to stay where we are, we can not have players in the squad, or at last not too many of them, who take their time to develop. That holds the club back when we need to be pushing on. If we buy a player now, he gets a year to prove his worth, a year to show improvement, a year to say keep me.

If a player can't do that, and that is shown on the training ground, then if a replacement is available at the right price, you change them. Players then know that while we develop youth, you have to perform. To be a top club we have to be ruthless or eventually we will end up with too many players who do not improve, even over time.

Football is a brutal business and we have to be brutal to stay at the top.

---