Mauricio Pochettino defended Danny Rose after Arsène Wenger criticised the Spurs player for a tackle that injured Héctor Bellerín. The Arsenal manager believes Bellerín will be out for a month after sustaining an ankle injury in the north London derby. Wenger blamed the injury on a late tackle by Rose in the dying minutes of the match, though stopped short of accusing the player of deliberate harm.
Pochettino said he was surprised by the remarks and reminded Wenger that football was a contact sport. “I totally understand when players are playing with passion like Danny,” he said. “We are always aggressive in our play and sometimes things happen. Football is a contact sport, always. You cannot avoid the contact.
“I respect Arsène Wenger a lot. His comment is very strange but I respect him. For me what happens on the pitch is never about bad intentions, it is about football.”
Pochettino went on to draw comparisons with a challenge Rose himself endured this week, during England’s international friendly with Spain, where the left-back was on the end of a lunge from Dani Carvajal that caused the Spaniard to be booked and Rose to be substituted.
“Two days ago there was a bad tackle on Danny from Carvajal but that is football,” the Spurs manager said. “Maybe Danny might have come in from training and said, ‘I cannot play on Saturday.’ If he did, I cannot criticise Carvajal because it is a game. We want all players to be like a man, to be aggressive, make a tackle. Sometimes you cannot stop and you arrive late. You cannot criticise every single tackle.”
Pochettino’s remarks came as Spurs continue to endure their own injury difficulties. The Argentinian confirmed that Toby Alderweireld is still some time from making his comeback to the first team and has been joined on the sidelines by Érik Lamela and Ben Davies. There was better news about Dele Alli, however, with his return expected in the next week, perhaps even the Premier League match against West Ham United on Saturday.
The Belgian centre-half was forced off during Spurs’ 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion on 15 October after damaging nerves in his knee and was expected to be back in the squad before now. Pochettino said on Thursday that the player, who has been outstanding since arriving from Southampton in July 2015, has yet to return to full training.
“At the beginning we believed it would be a short process but the recovery has been very slow,” he said. “The knock he got has aggravated his nerves and that is difficult but it’s true that today he is nearly ready to join the group and that is very good news. He will be available in one week or 10 days more if all goes well.
“We are very happy with Dele Alli. He showed today in training that he’s in very good condition. We need to know whether we take the risk to play him against West Ham, put him on the bench, or protect him for Tuesday next week. We’re happy it’s not a big issue.”
Pochettino insisted that Spurs’ injury problems this season, with Harry Kane another prominent absentee in the early months of the season, were beyond the club’s control.
“Sometimes things happen,” he said. “You can control many things but sometimes the touch that causes an injury you cannot control, Toby’s injury was a very strange injury and you can also look at when Dele twisted his ankle. But we are not worried. The only thing that would be worrying was if the same injury was being repeated every month. We have different injuries and it’s not about how we train it’s about football.”
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