Aaron Lennon sets record straight on rumoured fallout with Mauricio Pochettino

Aaron Lennon has been speaking about how his career at Tottenham came to an end, refuting the claims that have been made in the media about how the infamous Spurs ‘bomb squad’ fell out with Mauricio Pochettino before being ousted from the club.

Lennon’s decade-long Spurs career came to an end in 2015, with Pochettino shipping him out on loan to Everton just six months after arriving at the club before selling him to the Toffees at the end of his first season at the club.

There has been a lot said and written about what happened behind the scenes at Hotspur Way during the 2014-15 season as several senior stars were frozen out and replaced by younger players.

Reports have claimed that Lennon was part of the so-called ‘bomb squad’ who fell out with Pochettino, allegedly because they did not agree with the Argentine’s training methods and tactical instructions.

Aaron Lennon clears the air about Tottenham’s bomb squad

The likes of Emmanuel Adebayor, Etienne Capoue, Younes Kaboul, and Benoit Assou-Ekotto were the other senior members of the squad who were ousted.

They were replaced by the likes of Ryan Mason, Danny Rose, and Harry Kane, as Mauricio Pochettino oversaw a revolution at the club, but Lennon has dismissed the suggestion that there was any clique in the Tottenham dressing room at the time.

The former Spurs winger told Football.London: “There was speculation about this little cliquey thing around us, but there wasn’t really any cliques at Tottenham to fair. Everyone got along. It was more like one big group, but it just felt like the senior lads, I think Daws was on his way out just before that also.

“We had a group of us who were slightly older, I don’t know if it was that he felt that way he would just get a better response out of the younger lads, but you just never know from a manager, you don’t really get real answers. I did pull him up a few times on it and asked him ‘why am I not playing’ and he didn’t give me much back and it was all ‘it’s tactical, it’s tactical’.

“I’ve been in the game long enough to know this is not tactical, but that’s your choice. There were no hard feelings, you accept it. Not easily, I was gutted, absolutely gutted when I was leaving Spurs. I absolutely loved the place and like I said at the time, I still felt I was the right person and I should be playing.

“But he picked the team and in the end, after a few months of not playing, I was knocking on his door saying ‘I think it’s best if we go our separate ways if we can find a solution’.”

Lennon explains his relationship with Pochettino

The 37-year-old confessed that he got the feeling straight away that he was not an important part of Pochettino’s plans when the former Spurs boss arrived from Southampton.

However, the England international insisted that he maintains a good personal relationship with the Argentine coach, who he described as a ‘good man’.

When asked about no longer being a fixture in the team under Pochettino, Lennon said: “I picked up that quite early, to be honest. I played in the first few games, but there were some early warning signs. I think it was the same, not just for me, but a few of the older lads. They’d decided to go along a lot younger route and I was 27 at the time. I wasn’t that old, but I did get that feeling.

“You do as a player, you get that feeling and you could tell. There were games where I thought I should have been playing and I wasn’t playing, and he wasn’t really giving me much reason for why I wasn’t playing. So sometimes you know the writing’s on the wall and after a little while, I did get that feeling.

“Look, there were no hard feelings with him and I enjoyed his stuff. I learned quite a bit off him in a short period of time, especially on the physical aspect. Especially during a couple of his pre-seasons, I ended up taking a lot of his runs into my future career which I used off-season, which I thought were really good runs he did.

“He is a good man. It was funny because I bumped into him a few times after and we always had a chat, and had a little catch-up. I really didn’t mind it. I was in the game long enough to realise that some managers you’re not for them, and they’ve got a different way of playing, a different style, and you have to accept it.”

READ MORE: Adebayor says former Spurs manager was better than Arsene Wenger

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