Tottenham news: Mauricio Pochettino hopes Spurs players have grown up after last season's title agony

For many Tottenham Hotspur players, this was the worst summer of their careers. In late April and May their Premier League title dreams collapsed, with painful draws against West Bromwich Albion and Chelsea before embarrassing defeats to Southampton and Newcastle United. They fell so far they finished the season in third.

Then, in June and July, most of Spurs’ team were crushed or frustrated in their international efforts. Eight Spurs players suffered as England and Belgium embarrassingly crashed out of Euro 2016. Hugo Lloris captained France to their Paris final, which they lost. Erik Lamela’s Argentina were runners up in the Copa America for the second year in a row.

The players needed to be lifted when they returned in late July but what they got from Mauricio Pochettino was a brutal assessment of where last season had gone wrong, especially the 5-1 defeat at St James’ Park. Pochettino was furious with that performance, and with the fact that, as it was the last game of the season, he did not get the chance to tell his players how he felt at the time.

Pochettino took a young Spurs squad to Australia in late July but when he returned to Enfield he met up with his senior players who he had not seen for two months. And he told them how personally offended he had been by that Newcastle collapse.

“When we got back from Australia, we talked a bit about it,” Pochettino revealed on Thursday afternoon. “The players needed to hear my feelings, how I felt after the game and after the season, because there was no time to share [then]. I explained my point of view and my feelings.”

Those feelings were furious. “I just told them, that if I had had the opportunity to kill them, then I would have done. I wanted to kill all of them. And kill myself too. I am very honest with them and they are very honest with me. That is a very good relationship.”

The words might sound harsh but that is the medicine Pochettino has decided upon for his players. This is his third season in charge at Tottenham and only Mark Hughes and Arsene Wenger have managed their clubs continuously in the Premier League for longer. Pochettino has spent all summer agonising over last season, at the cost of any enjoyment of his holidays. And he decided that it was a lack of mental maturity over the final stretch that cost them the title.

“After a very tough season, it was tough to manage the last few weeks,” Pochettino explained. “After Chelsea it was difficult to manage the situation, because it was impossible to win the title. Then in your mind you are tired, after the whole season, it was a big stress. We lacked focus to finish the season in the way that we deserved. Football is about experience and learning to improve. Our team today is more mature than last season.”

Maturity, more than anything else, is what Pochettino demands from his players this year. This squad has developed under him better than anyone could have expected. Now they need to take the final step, and for Pochettino that means getting back into their heads.

“Football is tactical, is physical, technical, but it is mental, more mental than [it was] many years ago,” Pochettino said. “Today, to be strong in your mind is important. We need to know how to improve our mental state. That is very, very important. I think this was key in the last few games in last season.”

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On the training ground there is very little else for Spurs to work on. In the transfer market they have only signed two squad players, Victor Wanyama and Vincent Janssen. “To move on the team, to improve, to achieve another level, it is here that we need to improve. It is not tactical, it is not philosophical, because after two years we know very well how we need to play. It is here in our heads that we need to improve.”

That is why Pochettino started by tearing into his senior players, and getting some closure on the disaster of folding against a relegated 10-man team and losing as badly as they did. But since then he has been delighted by the intensity his players have shown in training, as they look hungry to improve on last season. Their international disappointments do not weigh heavy upon them.

“No impact,” Pochettino said of any Euro-hangover. “It’s strange, but no impact. The good thing is that they are very happy to be back here training together on the training ground. That was our worry as a coaching staff, how they would assimilate the situation. But it is unbelievable how they behave and the energy they show now. They completely forget the Euros, and they are very focused and excited on the season we have ahead.”

This is a grown-up group now and their leader Hugo Lloris was closer than anyone to a trophy, as his France team lost their final, just over one month ago. But all of that is forgotten now, as Spurs prepare to go to Goodison Park on Saturday afternoon.

“Hugo was very close to achieving a very good and important trophy,” Pochettino said. “We need to use that, not to feel angry or disappointed, to win titles and lift trophies. This is very important. Hugo is in a very good way. That is what has surprised us, because we don’t need to work too much. Only to say ‘come on, run and play’, and to say nothing.”