When Kyle Walker was branded a snake after quietly manoeuvering his exit to City behind the scenes, landing the club a staggering fee for a 27-year old and sending a heartwarming video to the fans after his many years of service, I thought the treatment was incredibly harsh. Danny Rose’s moves yesterday feel thoroughly reptilian.

Rose who, lest we forget, has been injured for months, set up an interview with The Sun newspaper — the grubby tabloid needs no introduction — to explain that he will get what he deserves financially, that he will play for a northern club before he finishes playing, and to let the world know that he will never forget how badly Spurs fans treated him. There are various other points that he makes which I will come back to, but first I want to focus on the point of this interview.

In my opinion there can be little doubt as to the intentions of this: it’s both a ‘come and get me’ plea to the Manchester clubs, and a pre-emptive, PR-driven ‘I had no choice but to leave’, face-saving, mop-up job. Rose wants fans, media and potential sponsors to feel as though he was backed into a corner by Spurs’ lack of transfer activity, lack of silverware and by them not paying him market rate.

I have seen suggestions that Rose is taking one for the team, giving Daniel Levy a kick up the backside. There is absolutely no way that a player would approach a mainstream tabloid in this way for that purpose, it is far too risky a move.

Some have some sympathy with Rose. He’s 27, he’s paid considerably less than players at the wealthiest clubs, and he has never won a trophy. But he’s also playing for the team that finished as runners-up last year, with the potential to improve with some consolidation. There are no guarantees that a move would bring trophies and, indeed, he owes his career to Mauricio Pochettino, who has transformed him from a decent Premier League player to one of the best in his position in world football. He is paid a decent salary compared to most other Premier League footballers (ignoring the wealthy five for a moment), has been given steady incremental rises over the years, even when– quite frankly — he did not deserve them.

To arrange this interview days before the season starts in order to benefit himself (either, depending on your interpretation, to ruffle feathers, negotiate a better contract or to try to force through a transfer) will — at worst — leave us without a top class left-back for the season or — at best — have a destabilising impact. This self-centred approach to the game is a stark reminder of what football (a game played by a team) has become, and also of where Spurs really sit in the pecking order.

The points Rose makes about Spurs’ lack of spending would be fair enough coming from an embittered fan. We have yet to strengthen, and it has been frustrating to watch our rivals improve their squads (and in some cases, their first elevens). But ultimately he is an employee of the club, and the management will be absolutely furious that he has gone rogue in this way. Levy has generally overseen a tenure where players toe the company line, and anyone who hasn’t has generally not lasted long.

Pochettino must feel incredibly let-down too. Rose and Pochettino are known to be particularly close, with Rose nicknamed the manager’s son by his teammates.

The suggestion by some fans that Rose has a point, and that Spurs should just pay the going rate totally missed the point.

Lots of people shouting about Levy not paying players market rate. It's not a choice; Levy pays players based on what we can afford to pay. — Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) August 10, 2017

Daniel Levy is hamstrung by our lack of revenue — hence the need for a new stadium. Swiss Ramble writes wonderfully about football finances and wrote in January of this year that we had a ‘wages to turnover ratio’ of 51%, with Manchester United 45% and Manchester City 50%. This means that the percentage of our turnover that goes toward wages is higher than that of the Manchester clubs; their huge turnovers make their higher wage bills possible/sustainable. For comparison, Arsenal’s ratio is 56%, Liverpool’s 56%, and Chelsea are an anomaly on 68%. When you see Premier League wages presented in this way it illustrates the market that we are working within.

If ‘market rate’ for Rose’s wages are £160k per week, reportedly around £95k per week more than what he earns currently, that would involve spending an additional £5m a year on him alone. Were we to make similar increases to all of our best players (which we would have to do were we to bump up his salary), we’d be looking at over £50m. We cannot afford this; not least because we have £750m worth of stadium to pay for.

A point to end on before I have to try to forget Danny Rose and think about my day job: Rose is risking an awful lot in a World Cup year. If he doesn’t get the move that he seems to crave, he could face having to build bridges with his manager and we know from experience that Pochettino has a low tolerance to this kind of behaviour. Players have said far less and ended up gone.