TOTTENHAM

FORGET the fact that Tottenham will not win the Europa League this season – that is not the priority, however much Mauricio Pochettino has professed publicly that he has been fi ghting on two fronts in the latter part of the season.

However, the fact that a team with aspirations of winning the Premier League are using the distant second- placed team in the Bundesliga as a bit of Champions League tourism shows how poor the title race has been this season.

And concluding that the gulf is genuinely as wide as it appeared to be in the Westfalenstadion, makes a mockery of crowning anybody Premier League champions this season.

“I think the players had a good experience but we spoke yesterday and I told them that to play at the next level you compete with teams like Borussia Dortmund which is a real test,” Pochettino said last night.

“It was good for us to feel what a game in the Champions League feels like.

“I was disappointed because the result was bad but to build a group for the next few years to compete at the level of Borussia Dortmund – that is very diffi cult. We were disappointed but it was a very good test for us to compare the level. We just did not have enough quality.”

England wants its champions to be entering the senior European competition as one of the favourites – the money swilling about the Premier League demands it, in fact.

So if Tottenham are to bounce back from their fi rst three- goal drubbing of the season and overhaul Leicester, they will need to grow up fast.