Danny Rose was a guest on the Lockdown Tactics Podcast on Tuesday and the Spurs star certainly revealed plenty of inside stories from his career.
Among the things that the 29-year-old opened up on was how he didn’t have a great initial relationship with former boss Tim Sherwood.
Rose arrived at Tottenham from Leeds United as a 17-year-old and it took him a while to establish himself as a regular in the side. However, the England international admitted that moving to Spurs at a such a young age was a great experience for him.
He revealed that he developed both as a person and as a player under the watchful eyes of John McDermott and Alex Inglethorpe.
The left-back said (as relayed by Football.London): “I left at a young age. It was something I needed to do. You know when you’re 15 and you’re at home and your living around your mates, you’re doing things that you shouldn’t be doing.
“It was probably the right thing for me to do. I moved and it was difficult for the first few years. I was going home as much as I could. Now I hardly ever go back to Doncaster.
“I was going from living with family straight into a hotel for three months. Then I had my own apartment straight after. So 16 and having my own apartment which was a strange feeling.
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“Being away from home, I’d never been away like that. It was a great experience.
“I have to say Tottenham were brilliant. At the time the youth coaches were John McDermott, who’s now moving on to the FA, and Alex Inglethorpe, who is now at Liverpool and the director of football was Damien Comolli.
“So all of them and Chris Hughton, who was the assistant, were great. Chris is a legend. He was great. So I think I had the best possible set-up to succeed at Spurs, no doubt.
“People will notice a bit more now with John McDermott going to the national team, he was the head of the academy set-up, and with him once he’s seen you’re good enough, he wants you out there.
“He’s a northerner as well, he’s from Yorkshire, and I connected with him really well.
“He was a big help to me and a lot of players who came through Spurs in the past ten years. There has been a lot.”
Rose established himself as a regular in the side under Sherwood but admitted that the former Spurs boss didn’t immediately take to him when he replaced Andre Villas-Boas at the helm in 2013.
The Spurs star added: “The relationship between a coach and a player is massive. When Tim Sherwood came to Spurs, I get on so well with Tim now, but it’s fair to say that at the time, at 18 or 19, I had a bit of an attitude.
“I still trained and played as hard as I could but at the time Tim, being old school, he saw that and I think it’s fair to say he didn’t like me. But I won him over and he loves me now and we speak whenever we can.
“Once Tim had got to know me and he saw that I had a fiery side just like him as a player, trying to kick somebody or whatever, and he knew that I was someone he could trust.
“When he became manager at Spurs for half a season I played pretty much every game he was there. Even now when I play well he’s the first person who messages me.”
Spurs Web Opinion
I never really had much time for Tim Sherwood during his time at Spurs and even when I see him doing punditry work now, he comes across as inauthentic and someone who never fails to big up his own achievements. However, he does deserve credit for kick-starting the careers of Harry Kane, Danny Rose, and Nabil Bentaleb, even though the Algerian didn’t last too long at Spurs.
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