Eric Dier: "The next game is always the most important"

Eric Dier feels the team has 'put down another marker' by reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League - but focus is already on our return to Premier League action at Southampton on Saturday.

At the Club since the start of the 2014/15 season, Eric has already racked up 32 appearances in Europe for us - the same as greats Martin Chivers and Martin Peters - and in three seasons in the Champions League, has seen us progress from group stage to last 16 and now the quarter-finals.

He returned from a bout of Tonsillitis off the bench in the second half of our 1-0 win at Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night as we clinched a 4-0 aggregate victory against the Bundesliga leaders.

"It’s really special," said Eric, who has featured in five UCL games this time around. "We keep pushing every season, improving every season and this is another marker we’ve put down.

"We’re really looking forward to the quarter-finals. I thought we were really unlucky to go out against Juventus last season and we’ve managed to go one step further now. We’re all looking forward to the draw, seeing who we get and seeing how far we can go.

"Now we want to win the next game, which is Southampton, the game after that and then the quarter-final when it arrives.

"Southampton is really important. The next game is always the most important and that’s what the manager always drills into us. We have to go to Southampton now and win and it’s going to be another tough game, they are improving under their new manager. We know that, we expect that and we have to be ready for it."

As for Tuesday night's win in Dortmund, Eric added: "The effort from everyone from the beginning was massive. Mentally it’s a very difficult situation because psychology is everything in football and they had nothing to lose, which is a nice feeling to have when you play football. We had to counter that, get through the first half, score our goal and from there, we were able to play more and see the result out."