Ahead of Tottenham’s opening International Champions Cup match against PSG, Danish play-maker Christian Eriksen has defended Pochettino’s comments that Spurs don’t necessarily need to spend money to improve on last season.
Yesterday, Spurs gaffer Mauricio Pochettino explained to ESPN that although the rest of the top 7 had already splashed out on reinforcements, none were guaranteed success and that Spurs were perfectly ‘calm’ during this seemingly frantic transfer window.
Today Christian Eriksen, the White Hart Dane himself, re-affirmed Pochettino’s philosophy, suggesting that Tottenham do not need to spend money in order to improve. He told ESPN:
“I don’t think you need to spend to win something. It’s just a matter of how you see a team, how the players are.”
“Only Walker has left in our team and we know what we did last season, so I can’t see why we shouldn’t be able to do hopefully even better than last season. Of course it might be different, but hopefully not.”
“It’s an English thing, isn’t it? It’s an English thing where you have to spend money to win something apparently. I read something from the gaffer where he said our club are just different compared to other clubs in that we don’t spend as much money as them.”
The 25 year old joined Tottenham in 2013 as one of the ‘Bale’ seven who were all brought in for over £100 million, following the £85 million+ sale of Welsh wizard Gareth Bale, and of those seven just two remain in Eriksen and Argentinian winger Erik Lamela.
Tottenham’s relatively poor transfer business in 2013 is a lesson the club have learned from, according to Eriksen, who insists spending less money and patiently adding to the squad is the way forward.
“When I came there were seven new players at the same time and you saw how that ended,” He added. “Now in the last few seasons we haven’t bought as many players and it’s changed around. Of course you have to have a philosophy, a plan and it looks like we have one.”
“If you buy a lot of players everyone needs to know what is going on straight away and be a bit lucky. We are lucky at Spurs at the moment. Everybody knows what’s going on and what needs to be done. Spurs are in a lucky position.”
Instead, the Denmark international reckons it’s much more important to keep the squad together, as Eriksen believes that the current team is more than capable of winning the Premier League title next season. He said:
“We as a team are very young and everyone has a long contract — no one has to go away they are happy where they are.”
“Everyone felt that last season that we were on the right road but Chelsea were just winning all those games 1-0! Of course we have the feeling something special is on the way and hopefully we can turn it around from last season and keep that same feeling as well to get the season started and be in a good shape straight away.”
“I think the difference at the start of the season last season, we had a few draws in the first few games and, although we managed to turn it around, by that time Chelsea were already ahead. We need to make our own way this time — we finished very strongly last season and we need to do that for the whole season if possible.”
“Last season second place was silverware — just not gold. We want to be on top and that’s what you want to be remembered as. The team has been together for many years and we’re going to go for titles. Hopefully we’ll be better than the other 19 teams.”
“Playing for Spurs is special,” He added. “I was saying to my girlfriend on holiday that I’d just realised it is going to be my fifth season here and it’s gone so quick. The first season with the new manager was different but the last three has been the same people, same staff.”
Finally, Eriksen predicted that next season would be the hardest fought yet, with no team looking like they’re in the strongest position to be crowned champions. He said:
“It will be very close this season because everyone is in Europe and everyone has to think about two or three tournaments and the top sides will want to win everything so the key is to try and keep everyone fit and sharp really. There’s no advantage for any of the teams there.”
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