“I was a person that liked the reality, that the manager never lied to me. If I was s***, I was s***. But I needed to know sometimes. When you are young, you need to know the reality because when you are in your bubble, you believe that always all you do is right. And sometimes you need people who say ‘hey, come on, what happened with you?’.”

Following last season’s title challenge and all the plaudits that came with it, Pochettino accepts an element of complacency may have crept into the minds of his players.

“It is difficult to understand why in every game we have some period in the first half that is difficult to get the pace of the game and to manage and handle the game like we normally used to do,” said Pochettino.