Tanguy Ndombele should move away from Tottenham if he's not given the "chance to play", according to Dimitar Berbatov, who says the midfielder may be "fighting a losing battle" with Jose Mourinho.
Ndombele completed a £54 million ($68m) move to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium from Lyon last summer, becoming the club's most expensive signing of all time in the process.
The Frenchman committed to a six-year contract with the north Londoners, but his first season in the Premier League hasn't gone quite according to plan. The 23-year-old has only featured in 21 of Spurs' 36 Premier League fixtures, and has found himself reduced to a bit-part role in the squad since Mourinho's arrival as head coach in November.
Mourinho has publicly questioned Ndombele's fitness levels on a number of occasions, and he has only seen 64 minutes of action since the resumption of the campaign on June 17.
The Tottenham boss left the ex-Lyon star out of his squad for the 3-1 midweek win over Newcastle, and confirmed after the match that he will miss the final two games of the season due to a knee injury.
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Berbatov is not certain that Ndombele will be able to force his way into Mourinho's plans when he returns, and has urged him to seek a transfer if regular playing time is no longer guaranteed.
"Ndombele was brought in under Mauricio Pochettino and it is normal for a new manager to shake things up. Maybe Mourinho thinks the Frenchman doesn't fit into his system," the former Spurs striker wrote in his latest column for Betfair.
"I was in a similar situation at Leverkusen. We changed managers three times and I needed to prove myself to each one, show them that I deserved to play.
"Also, at Spurs when Martin Jol left and Juande Ramos came, I remember him telling me that for his first game in charge he wanted to try something different, and he put me on the bench. I knew then that I needed to show him that he was wrong and he had made a mistake in doing that, so I had to prove myself.
"You have these situations where you need to fight for your place and show the boss that he has made the wrong decision. Sometimes, you can change the mind of a manager - I was lucky enough to do that at Spurs - but sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, a manager just might not like you.
"Ndombele has been linked with Bayern Munich and, if Mourinho continues to leave him out and the player doesn't want to sit on the bench, then he should move for sure. If he wants to stay and fight, he needs to be realistic and know that he has a chance to change the manager's mind, and that he isn't fighting a losing battle with Mourinho.
"Sometimes you can bust your balls in every training session, score goals in games and play good football but, if the manager doesn't like you, there's nothing you can do. If that is the situation between Mourinho and Ndombele, the player needs to move.
"He has been at Spurs for just a year and hasn't really had much of a chance to play. I'm a Spurs fan and I don't know how he can play and how he will turn out after five or six consecutive games so that I can make a fair assessment of him. For me, he should get more time, otherwise, it will be money stupidly spent."
