Spurs 1-0 Inter - Mauricio's verdict

Mauricio Pochettino felt patience was key as we kept our Champions League hopes alive with a 1-0 victory against Inter on Wednesday night.

Christian Eriksen fired home the winner after 80 minutes at Wembley to move us ahead of the Italians in Group B.

We now need to match Inter’s result in the final round of matches to progress to the knockout stage. We travel to Barcelona on Matchday Six while Inter host PSV on 11 December. After facing an uphill battle with one point after three games, a win at the Nou Camp will take us through.

It was a controlled performance against the in-form Nerazzurri - eight wins in nine in Serie A coming to London - in a game we had to win. Dele, Lucas Moura and Erik Lamela all went close in the first half before Harry Winks struck the crossbar.

Jan Vertonghen missed from close range as time started to tick away in the second half and Hugo Lloris had to keep out Ivan Perisic and Danilo D’Ambrosio before Eriksen struck, a clinical finish after Dele helped on the ball from Moussa Sissoko’s driving run.

“We are alive and it was such an important performance,” said Mauricio. “I’m very happy. Like I always tell you, I’m very pleased for the players and our fans.

“We were very patient. We managed the tempo. We always try to play respecting our philosophy and that’s so important.

“We scored, we deserved the victory and now we’ll be humble, try to rest and recover from the effort and prepare for another big game against Arsenal (on Sunday).”

Having spent nine years as a player and manager of Espanyol, Mauricio faces an emotional return to Barcelona to take on his old city rivals - Barca have already wrapped up the group and beat PSV 2-1 on Wednesday night.

“That is what we wanted,” he added. “Now we have (it) in our hands to go through to the next stage. Of course, Barcelona have qualified but we are going to try. I love to play this type of game. We are in football because of that - that is the adrenaline we love to feel.”