Graham Roberts calls on Spurs to drop contract rebel from first-team

Former Tottenham Hotspur defender Graham Roberts has claimed that Christian Eriksen should not be in the first team plans at the club.

Eriksen revealed just days after the Champions League final defeat to Liverpool that he wanted to depart North London and seek a new challenge elsewhere whilst inviting contact from Real Madrid.

The 27-year-old is out of contract in the summer and can agree on a pre-contract with a European club in January before walking away as a free agent at the end of the current campaign with Spurs not eligible to receive a penny.

Eriksen was named among the substitutes for Tuesday night’s humiliating 7-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League and was unable to influence proceedings after replacing Tanguy Ndombele in the 64th minute.

Roberts believes that Eriksen should be frozen out of Mauricio Pochettino’s squad due to his contract situation and revealing his desire to depart the club.

The 60-year-old, who was part of the Spurs side who won the UEFA Cup in 1980 cited the fact that Eriksen’s performances over the last six months have been below par and should either sign a new contract or leave, with the club always being bigger than the player.

Roberts told talkSPORT: “Christian Eriksen, if he had signed a contract [with Spurs], he would have played last night,”

“For me he shouldn’t be on the bench – he shouldn’t be anywhere near the first team.

“Because he wants to leave and has come out and said he wants to leave.

“Go. If you think it’s better somewhere else, go.

“If you’ve got players in your club that don’t want to play for the club and said they want to leave – they’ve got to go.

“The badge on the shirt is bigger than any name on the back of it.

“You cannot have players in your football club saying they want to get out and want to go and play for somebody else, because it’s just not a good feeling in the club then.

“Poch is doing the best he can at the moment because there has got to be unrest in the football club.

“When I played, if I went and told the manager I wanted to leave, I would have been sold two days later, three days later.

“If he wants to play football and get back to where he was, he has to sign a new contract and put all that to one side and get back to being the top player he was.

“Because in the last six months he has not been that player.”

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