Banished by Mauricio Pochettino to train with the Under-21s as punishment, Townsend will not feature against Arsenal tomorrow but then having not started a Premier League game all season that will not come as a surprise. Two years on from the World Cup qualifying goal, and locked into a long contract at Spurs the question now is whether Townsend has got what it takes to get his career back on track.  The challenge facing Townsend, 24, is the same one that many young English footballers will come up against over the next few years: a promising start, a transfer market premium because of their homegrown status but under pressure in a Premier League that can afford the best players in the world. He has cleared the first hurdle and gone from academy to first team, but can he stay the course?  Townsend went out on nine separate loans spells before he made it at Spurs, who have as done as much as most Premier League clubs recently to encourage native talent. Having established a top-flight career Townsend now finds himself second choice to Erik Lamela, who is playing well, cost £30m and whom the club are naturally eager to succeed. Townsend, as an academy boy, is easier to discard. Which is not to ignore his limitations too, but he has achieved too much to let it slip away now.  Andros Townsend has largely been confined to the bench this season  Those who know him say his commitment is not in doubt. He used the last week of his holidays this summer to go on an intensive pre-season training course with a fitness coach and a goalkeeper to make sure he hit the ground running for pre-season. Since then he has found his chances hard to come by: just two starts in the Europa League, one in the Capital One Cup and a lot of substitute’s performances when he has been obliged to grasp his opportunity in fleeting moments.  Townsend himself is regarded at the club as a good sort, albeit one who rises a little too easily to the bait in the eternal battle of egos that rage in every Premier League dressing room. His contemporaries Harry Kane and Ryan Mason have established themselves in the first team and there is a frustration that he has not been able to do the same. That 18-year-old Josh Onomah was sent on ahead of him against Villa shows that competition is coming from below too.  As for the clash with Gardiner, there has been a private apology from Townsend and an admission of wrongdoing, The coach himself, who has been at the club since 2006 and accompanied Ledley King to the World Cup finals that year simply asked, according to some, for a little more effort in the warm-down. As for Townsend, he clearly felt that there was provocation and reacted accordingly.  On Tuesday night in Seville, Fabian Delph was asked to do the same kind of warm-down and amused the Manchester City fans locked in the stadium by ending his sprints sliding on his chest or executing a very patchy forward-roll. Townsend needs to realise that whatever his frustrations, dismissing the instructions of a member of staff is an act of petulance only likely to reinforce certain attitudes about young English players.  Roy Hodgson has decided against selecting Townsend  His story of dwindling first team chances is one likely to play out over and again in the lives of the young English players who seek to make it in the Premier League. It has been the same for Kieran Gibbs at Arsenal, and to a lesser extent Jack Wilshere before his injury. It is a tough school and it is getting tougher and, until the last two England squads, Townsend has found recognition at international level less of a struggle than with his club.  A lifelong Spurs fan, he wants to succeed and in generations past perhaps it would have been a smoother ride for a player of Townsend’s qualities once he made the first team. These days it is a fight for survival and there will be many more in the coming years who have to face the same struggle. If you care about the England team and English footballers, you cannot help but wish Townsend well, but in the end it will be up to him.  The decision by the West Yorkshire police force to refer themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission over their investigation into the Bradford City fire of 1985 is the first admission from any part of the British establishment that there could have been an issue with how the aftermath was handled. It has taken 30 years and the work of survivor Martin Fletcher to get to this point and now the ball is very much in the court of the Home Secretary, Theresa May.  Following the fire at the Dublin nightclub Stardust in 1981 that killed 48 people there was a full-scale reconstruction of part of the building by the investigatory authorities in a hangar in Boreham Wood to test theories on the likely cause and spread of the blaze. So too in the inquiry into the King’s Cross fire of 1987, that killed 31, a third-scale replica of the escalator was built. At Bradford where 56 people died, and there are numerous accounts of an acrid burning plastic spell in the minutes before the blaze took hold, there was no reconstruction of any kind.  Of course, the inquiry can only work with the evidence handed to it by the police, and if the investigating force are prepared to admit it is worth revisiting then they really deserve all the government support they can be offered.
Tottenham winger was omitted from Roy Hodgson's England squad after barely   featuring for his club this season