JOSE MOURINHO has warned his Tottenham stars to “stop moaning” when they don’t play, in a thinly-veiled attack on Dele Alli.
The Spurs boss has hooked his £50million-rated midfielder in two of their last four matches.
He left him out of the squad altogether for the trip to Bulgaria to face Lokomotiv Plovdiv.
And now the Portuguese has told his under-performing stars that he is fed up with their gripes when they are left on the sidelines.
Dele, 24, has been linked with a £50m move to hated rivals Arsenal or Paris Saint-Germain before the window slams shut on October 5.
Mourinho criticised Dele’s “lazy” training several times in their fly-on-the-wall documentary on Amazon All or Nothing.
And now he has said he wants all of them to “knuckle down” like £55m signing Tanguy Ndombele to show him they are worthy of a place in the starting XI.
He said: ” I don’t want players to moan, I don’t want players to be feel frustrated, I don’t want players to feel that I have something against them when I don’t pick them up.
“I want players to fight for the minutes that they want to be on the pitch and when you play for Tottenham, you have to understand that Tottenham wants to be better and for the rewards are to be better and better and the players cannot have a comfortable position on the pitch.
“They have to be ready to fight for the minutes they want to be on the pitch.”
Ndombele seemed certain to leave after a bust-up at Burnley before the lockdown when he was hauled off at half-time.
But he has worked hard this summer and forced his way into Mourinho’s plans – even though he was subbed at half-time against Southampton last weekend.
Mourinho said: “I just think that he felt the direction which it was going was not the right one and it’s something that players with me, they feel all of the time that I don’t give positions for free.
“The players have to fight, they have to perform, I would never give him a place in the team because he was an expensive buy or because he’s an important player.
“He has to do that by himself, probably with the help of his colleagues, with the help of his team mates, he went in a good direction.
“Let’s wait and see, Premier League matches are much more difficult matches than this one.
“The intensity is completely different, the quality of the opponent is much better. But against Southampton, even for 45 minutes, he had positive things.
“I say all the time, when a player improves it’s a player’s responsibility, it’s the player’s credit, it’s not the coach who makes the miracle.
“The player that does that by himself, to understand what he has to understand and go in the right direction that he has to go.
“Tanguy, step by step, is doing very well. He was good and brought a very good dynamic to the team, he managed to recover some balls, managed to make an effort in defensive transitions.
“And of course it was a positive game for him.”
The same could not be said of Dele, who has regularly angered Mourinho.
He was awful in the Prem opener against Everton, a 1-0 loss, when Mourinho branded the team “lazy”.
The England midfielder started against the Macedonian minnows in the Europe League on Thursday.
But he was subbed again as he failed to sparkle.
Mourinho has shown he will not put up with moaning players.
Left-back Danny Rose is set to be sold or loaned out before the transfer deadline.
Rose had a bust-up with Mourinho in the Amazon documentary – demanding to know why he was not playing and why a right-footed centre-back was ahead of him on his flank at full-back, which did not go down well.
