Tottenham fans are starting to turn on Toby Alderweireld
Toby Alderweireld is in trouble with Tottenham fans
Over the last several weeks, you can feel the sentiment of Tottenham fans changing about Toby Alderweireld. The club’s passionate fan base has gone from staunch support of their Belgian centre back to a gradual realization that he is the only man responsible for not signing a new deal with the club.
Mauricio Pochettino insists Alderweireld will play for the club again, but I’m not sure I believe him. The fact that his contract’s release clause will drop to just £25 million if he enters the last year of his deal makes a summer decision a borderline necessity for everyone involved. Alderweireld can either commit his future to Tottenham by signing a new deal or find himself a new club.
Longtime critics of Daniel Levy point to this as another example of the club being too cheap. I have to disagree vehemently. Levy has reportedly offered Alderweireld a wage packet of £130 thousand per week. That’s more money than Harry Kane currently makes. Levy hasn’t met the massive wage demands Alderweireld’s representatives have put forth, but it’s not as if he hasn’t made a legitimate effort to get him to sign a new deal.
The gradual change in Tottenham fans’ feelings on the subject has more to do with Alderweireld’s ridiculous social media pandering. Hardly a day goes by where Alderweireld, or more correctly one of his publicists, doesn’t post some cheery message about training hard for the club. At first those messages were perceived as signs he might really want to stay. Now they’re being interpreted as cheap attempts to get Spurs fans to exert pressure on the club to offer him more money.
The best thing for Alderweireld to do would be to cease with the social media onslaught. I understand what he and his team were trying to accomplish, but they’ve pushed things too far. The only thing he can really do to get himself back into the good graces of Tottenham fans would be to reclaim his spot in Mauricio Pochettino’s team.
That will require him to return to full fitness, or at least get somewhere close to it. Until he’s close to full capacity he doesn’t have a prayer of overtaking Davinson Sanchez in Pochettino’s starting XI. The talented Colombian currently has a stranglehold on his place in front of Hugo Lloris.
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The longer Alderweireld stays out of the lineup and the more trite social media messages he posts, the more Tottenham fans are going to start to turn against him. A social media blackout and a return to the pitch for the talented Belgian are both needed in the worst way.