Wayne Routledge has lifted the lid on his controversial move from Crystal Palace to Tottenham.

The winger left Palace for Spurs almost 15 years ago.

He told Palace TV: "It was difficult for me. It was difficult. In essence, I didn't want to leave. I nearly left the year before. I didn't want to leave and it was a mix between Iain Dowie and Simon Jordan, the Chairman, who said: 'No, you're not going anywhere, we'll get something sorted out.'

"It kept on going and going and nothing was sorted out. I then got offered not a 'token deal', but a deal I didn't think was right, in all honesty. I don't think it was right. Without getting into the technical aspects, I was playing football but playing, on relative terms, not what I should have been. Fine, no problem, I'm young, whatever.

"Then I got offered something that wasn't what I should have been offered and I had multiple offers for more [from other clubs]. I thought the right thing to do was to move on and try to better myself [playing] with better players. Me and my family made that decision as a whole.

"Other people were getting rewarded to a way bigger extent and I thought: 'You've helped me, got me into this position - what do we do here?' It's like everything in life - if it's not right, it's not right. There were many things you look back on and think: 'That could have been different, this could have been different.'

"I think I remember a couple of days after it was done, and I said: 'I don't want to go. I can't.' I felt like, not that I'd let people down, but that I was leaving and we'd just been relegated. It didn't feel right."