Lamela: 'Amazing to feel home fans' reaction'

Erik Lamela said the rapturous reception he received on his homecoming made all his hard work over the last 13 months worthwhile.

The Argentine midfielder was sent on for Dele Alli during the second half of Saturday’s thumping 5-1 win over Stoke City at Wembley in what was his first home game since returning to action.

His introduction was met with a deafening roar of support from the Spurs faithful inside the national stadium and the 25-year-old was so grateful for that as he savoured that winning feeling for the first time in well over a year.

“It was worth it (the hard work to return to fitness) for that,” said Erik, who also felt the love of our travelling fans when he came on against Leicester City and Watford.

“It was amazing because I worked really hard and during the time that I was injured I suffered a lot, especially mentally. It was really hard to be injured for a long time because I love to play football and I enjoy when I play so to feel the reaction from the home fans was amazing.

“It was very good to go on the pitch and feel the reaction from all the people and after that I wanted to show them something on the pitch like always, giving my best.”

Sidelined in October, 2016, Erik missed out on several high-scoring victories last season, so he was thrilled to have played a part in one this time around as goals from Harry Kane (2), Heung-Min Son, Christian Eriksen and a Ryan Shawcross own goal sent the Potters packing.

“It’s good to be here and to win the game like this, and to take the three points that we needed a lot to get into a better position,” he added. “It’s like I said (in this week’s matchday programme) – when you open the game, it is different.

“We scored the first goal, we could have scored another one in the first half but it was good to score the second one and then another one quickly. We could have scored many goals but because we opened the game, after that we could show our quality on this big pitch.”