No break for Kanoute

Pleat, who has now gone four games undefeated in his caretaker role, also spoke in more detail about Glenn Hoddle’s sacking and the type of man Spurs are now looking for.

“The man we want has to fit a certain profile. Would he represent Spurs well to the media? Is he a top coach? Would the players respect him? Is he a nutcase? Those are the boxes I’m talking about,” Pleat said.

The club’s director of football has been careful to avoid questions on Hoddle’s departure since taking temporary charge.

But he said yesterday: “Because of his pride, he (Hoddle) wanted to be the best player in training every day — at 46 years of age. I don’t think you can see the whole picture when you’re training out there among the guys. Can you imagine Wenger playing with Henry and the rest? Tactically, he was obsessed with the wing-back system but the players weren’t comfortable with it. I changed back to 4-4-2 immediately.

“We had been exposed against Chelsea when they played balls between our centre-backs too easily. Glenn wasn’t judged on half-a-dozen games. In some cases, wickedly, a chairman decides to make a change for political reasons, but that didn’t happen in this case.

“It was an accumulation of all sorts of happenings and incidents.”