Andros Townsend scares us with scary quotes

Andros Townsend is a very divisive figure. He is an extremely talented young player who consistently looks active and dangerous on the wing for Tottenham Hotspur and now England, but he also dribbles into traffic a lot and hits more of his shots off defenders than he does on target. He has plenty of time to develop into a more intelligent and measured player and certainly has the talent to be an undroppable star for club and country.

I think that picking his spots to try crazy things and making better decisions on the ball would make Townsend undroppable. He's all about those money stats. Take it away, Andros (via TalkSPORT).

"Goals and assists make you un-droppable and I know there are great players all vying for two wing spots at Spurs, so I need to get more goals and assists to cement my place in the team and not give the manager an excuse to drop me."

There's obviously a good chance that this is a canned answer during an interview he didn't care to give, but it's a bit worrying considering what we watch Townsend do game in, game out. There's obviously some confirmation bias at work here for me -- I think Townsend is a wasteful player who lacks game awareness and I'm more likely to see a quote like this as a problem than someone who does not think he is a wasteful player -- but it raises some interesting questions nonetheless.

Does Townsend genuinely think that the reason he's on the fringes of the Spurs and England starting lineups and not a locked-in first choice player is because he doesn't tally enough goals and assists? Based on the way he already plays, is this going to lead him to take more speculative shots, try more tricky passes and hit more crosses without looking up? Am I a crazy person for worrying about this?

I don't want to hear Townsend saying that he needs to rack up more goals and assists to cement his place in the Spurs and England teams. That scares the crap out of me. It makes me think he's going to focus on the worst aspects of his game and make them more prevalent.

Hopefully this was just a stock answer to a stupid question.