In assessing Danny Rose's time at Tottenham, the only place to start is at the beginning.

Rose's crowning moment in a Spurs shirt will always be *that* goal against Arsenal, just 10 minutes into his Premier League debut in April 2010.

Tottenham's social media team have gleefully published the footage – best accompanied by Alan Parry's 'Oooh-it's-Danny-Rose' commentary – before every north London derby since and, whatever was to follow, the strike guaranteed Rose instant immortality.

A 19-year-old Rose must have wondered if it would ever get any better and, on leaving Spurs a decade later for a season-long loan at Newcastle, he might still be wondering.

There were other big moments and an 18-month spell when Rose could legitimately claim to be one of the best left-backs in Europe, but he heads back to the north with a confusing legacy, having surely made his final appearance for Spurs.

At his peak, during the 2015-16 season and the first half of the following campaign, he was a supremely technical and athletic full-back, and there was nothing more exhilarating about Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs side than full-throttle Rose and Kyle Walker in tandem.

His commitment in last season's run to the Champions League Final, which Rose capped by swigging a beer on the pitch in Amsterdam, epitomised his attitude.

By that point, however, he was already in decline, never quite the same after suffering a knee injury in a dour 0-0 draw at Sunderland in January 2017.

He required surgery and the subsequent rehab was "one of the most difficult periods" of his life. The 29-year-old later revealed he had suffered from depression during eight long months on the sidelines. "I had to get away from Tottenham," he said.

He returned to action in October 2017 but failed to fully regain his rhythm, and increasingly made more headlines off the pitch than on it.

For some supporters, it was hard to forgive Rose his most explosive interview, with The Sun on the eve of the 2017-18 season, in which he took aim at the club's transfer policy, wage structure and ambition. He told Spurs to sign big names, "not players you have to Google and say, ‘Who’s that?’"

Others appreciated his outspokenness and felt he simply had the bravery to articulate what many in the fanbase were thinking.

As a reporter, it soon became more exciting to see Rose stopping in the mixed zone than with the ball at his feet, and in further candid interviews he took aim at VAR ("complete nonsense"), Wembley ("no longer special") and Arsenal ("fully deserved what they got").

His plain speaking made him almost unique as an elite footballer but strained his relationship with the club.

Along with Raheem Sterling, Rose undeniably changed the conversation around racism in this country with his bleakly honest assessment of football's failure to tackle the problem.

He is also a genuine pioneer for his discussions about mental health in the game, appearing in a high-profile BBC documentary last year.

His own relationship with Spurs fans was uneasy – he found it hard to forgive them for the negative reaction on social media when his new five-year contract was announced shortly after Pochettino's appointment – and by the end everything about his tenure at the club felt jaded.

His performances this season have been riddled with basic mistakes and he appeared to have become a disruptive influence in Jose Mourinho's dressing room.

Rose's exit, albeit temporarily, is something of a climbdown after he vowed in an interview with Standard Sport in November to run down the final 18 months of his contract until 2021.

To be fair, he also linked his future to Pochettino, who was sacked a few weeks later, but the comments felt like a declaration of war on the club and chairman Daniel Levy, as much as loyalty to the Argentine.

Eventually, Rose realised that to stay at Spurs would be to damage his own career, with a home European Championships ahead.

Poignantly, Rose says he is "looking forward to enjoying life again" at Newcastle, underlining how strained his situation at Spurs had become after 13 years in north London.

Supporters will always remember Rose's beginning, rather than his end. In time, hopefully he is able to do the same.