Dier's winter wish

Eric Dier is looking to continue what he sees as our winter ‘tradition’ by building up a head of steam for the late-November to early-New Year period.

As the 23-year-old rightly points out, since Mauricio Pochettino’s arrival in 2014, we’ve always managed to string together a solid run of form during the middle part of the campaign, much like an athlete finding their full flight in the middle of a race.

With two Premier League games in four days at home to West Bromwich Albion and away to Leicester City on the agenda following another magnificent performance against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League on Tuesday, Eric believes the coming weeks will be crucial if we’re to maintain a place in the upper reaches of the table.

“We always seem to excel going into the winter period,” said the versatile England international. “Under this manager, all the time I’ve been here, the winter period has always been a really good time for us, so hopefully we can continue in that tradition and get a really good run of games together now, because it’s such an important time.

“At the end of the winter period, when you go into January and February, it’s when you see really where everyone is at.”

Asked why he believes we usually manage to perform so consistently at this time of year, Eric answered: “Good physical preparations. We got into our stride before the international break and if we can carry that on into the winter period like we have done in previous seasons and use all the physical work that we’ve taken from pre-season, we’ll continue to progress.

“I think physically we’ll be in a really good place around Christmas for all the games that we have.”