At a minimum, Mauricio Pochettino wants his Tottenham Hotspur side to finish the 2015-16 Premier League season strong, rather than limping through the campaign’s final weeks and backing their way into UEFA Champions League qualification for next season.
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Meanwhile, Pochettino is undoubtedly lying in bed at night, thinking to himself, “What if I was the manager to lead Tottenham to its first top-division title since 1961? I, and every one of my players, would be legends for all eternity.” And so, Pochettino has urged his players to believe they can overcome Leicester City’s five-point lead with seven games remaining to do an unthinkable — quotes from the Guardian:“It’s true that we need to reduce the gap Leicester have with us, Arsenal and Manchester City, and it’s true they have a good advantage. But we need to keep fighting and believing. We need to believe we can catch them. We have to keep our standards up and go into the next game looking to perform like this again. Today was complete. It helped us to score early in the game, in the first action, and we controlled and managed the game very well after that.
“But we’ll go into a different period now from recently. After the international break we’ll play one game every week and we’ll have time to prepare in a different way, to training, to improve and do a lot of things that were impossible before. We are in a moment where we need to see our future in a very good way. It’s important to keep working hard and fight in every game.”
With Harry Kane once again amongst the goals — the 22-year-old leads the Golden Boot race by two after Sunday’s brace against Bournemouth — Christian Eriksen coming into one of his better patches of form all season; Mousa Dembele returning to full health, Jan Vertonghen on the verge of returning from a knee injury that’s sidelined him the last two months; and a defense that’s conceded just 24 goals in 31 games (fewest in the PL) on the season, there’s a decent to strong case to be made in Spurs’ favor.
Regardless, Pochettino’s second season in charge at White Hart Lane has represented a gigantic step forward and, as has been exclaimed ad nauseam all season long, the brightest of futures in north London.