Out-of-Favour Andros Townsend Still Has Value for Tottenham Hotspur
It has been almost a year since Andros Townsend gave Tottenham Hotspur a 3-1 lead at home to eventual champions Chelsea. The coolly converted penalty ensured that his side went into the break full of confidence, and afterwards they went on to seal a 5-3 win in exhilarating fashion.
Earlier this week, Townsend converted another spot-kick, opening the scoring in a 1-1 draw between Tottenham and Everton's under-21 sides. On the same night, 16th-place Chelsea suffered a crushing defeat to surprise table-toppers Leicester City.
It was hard to decide whose status had diminished more since January.
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The aforementioned defeat of the Blues was the first great performance of head coach Mauricio Pochettino's reign and also provided a fillip to Townsend's season. That the development of the team under the Argentinian since then has not coalesced with the 24-year-old making himself a significant contributor has mostly been down to the player.
Townsend's angry response to not being called on in last month's 3-1 win over Aston Villa—arguing with fitness coach Nathan Gardiner during a post-match warm-down—was understandable but not justified.
Frustrating as it will have been for an England international to see his manager bring on the inexperienced teenager Josh Onomah instead of him, the winger had done little in preceding appearances to deserve more playing time.
For the most part, Townsend has been listless and ineffective all season.
In his last appearance prior to Villa, he had failed to liven up a dire team display away at Anderlecht. His unimaginative and predictable routes of attack were comfortably nullified by the Belgian outfit.
Indeed, good work from him has been a rare sight in recent months—in keeping with the inconsistency that saw him eventually lose his place last season.
His perceptive contribution to Spurs' 1-0 win over Sunderland in September was disappointingly not followed up on. While his introduction in the 2-2 draw at Swansea City in October had a positive effect, it alone was not enough to warrant him displacing solidly performing position rivals like Erik Lamela.
Pochettino's decision to temporarily drop Townsend from the first-team squad after his acting-out was an appropriate disciplinary measure.
"When you behave in the wrong way, obviously you need to pay," the boss said in the aftermath, per Sky Sports, though he also afforded an empathetic note. "I can understand because I was a player and when you're not playing you are not happy."
The sidelining was not an indefinite action. Townsend was back training with his team-mates within a few weeks, his availability for selection again confirmed by Pochettino, with the head coach offering his charge scope for redemption.
"He is still young, needs to improve and for me forget the past," Pochettino said prior to playing West Ham United. "If he deserves to be in the team or in the squad, for me it’s not a problem."
What has followed since those comments is either a demonstration of man management set to reveal Pochettino as a patient master of motivation or a PR-spun, decidedly anticlimactic end to Townsend's Tottenham career.
Townsend has commendably looked to build up some match fitness playing for the under-21s, taking one of the designated overage spots. So far as his first-team opportunities have been concerned, he has again been forced to watch on as others' involvement is prioritised ahead of his.
He was an unused substitute for the West Ham, Qarabag and Monaco games, with Nacer Chadli's comeback from injury being deemed more important than Townsend's own hope to build some momentum. More learning experience for the talented Onomah and summer recruit Clinton Njie has also taken precedence over Townsend.
If Pochettino has been waiting on the right moment to call Townsend back into play—an all-or-nothing final shot for him to prove he understands that the team comes first—it could be now.
Spurs have hit a rut of attacking predictability in the last couple of league games, a 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion and a 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United. Their aspirations for relentless play have been stunted by equally hard-working opponents, their creativity limited by well-organised defensive resistance.
Bar Njie, Townsend is the only other midfielder/attacker in the squad capable of providing genuine width—so long as he is carefully instructed and not left to repeatedly follow his instinct to cut inside and shoot.
Deployed either on the left or (more probably) right wing, his attacking the flank could have proved useful in denying Newcastle wide men Moussa Sissoko and Georginio Wijnaldum the unencumbered, momentum-boosting freedom they made such good use of—a designed and directed assault of the wide areas that proved so useful helping win the aforementioned Sunderland game.
This weekend, Spurs come up against a Southampton outfit who were stretched mercilessly by Crystal Palace in their previous game.
Pochettino's side are not so practiced in the art of wing play these days, bar utilising their full-backs as outlets in support and on the overlap.
Townsend isn't in anywhere near the sort of form Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha currently are either, but so far as taking on Southampton, it is an option that should not be dismissed without due consideration.
Perhaps Pochettino has already decided to wind down Townsend's time at Tottenham in a fashion similar to the way he coldly ended the spells of others like Younes Kaboul and Aaron Lennon. His public statements of the opposite have been a reiteration of his tried-and-trusted smokescreen tactic.
If this is the case, it would reveal in the Spurs head coach a trait that also ranks among Townsend's worst on-field habits—an unwillingness to try to improve by adapting or tweaking a previously (or occasionally) successful strategy that has clearly been sussed by an opponent.
Townsend arguably does not deserve this last chance. But if he is capable of helping the team, Pochettino must not close the book on his Tottenham career just yet.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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