Three wins on the bounce, Poch’s stoicism filtering through a malleable young team and a New Year filled with cautious hope and expectation…

At Vicarage Road on Monday, the Watford fans wrongly felt aggrieved after Ake got himself dismissed for showing off his best Kung Fu Panda impression on my long term crush, Erik Lamela (anyone still think he’s rubbish?), and they were firmly behind their team during a chaotic finale. Son looked as crazed as his own supporters when he was celebrating after his cunning back heel beat Gomes, delight etched across his face as the away fans tried to smother him with big wet sloppy kisses…

We had a bit of luck against Hertfordshire’s second biggest club, a micrometer of the ball didn’t cross the line and Son was offside from the initial cross before the one that provided his goal. Lady Luck fluttered her eyelashes and the boys in Lilywhite (and navy blue) jumped in feet first, up to their tired hamstrings in it. We grafted and grifted a win. This is Tottenham Hotspur. Here us roar.

Before Poch took over as Field Marshal eighteen months ago, THFC had the aura of a grubby looking caterpillar slouching its way inside a chrysalis to sleep into another decade of mid-table mediocrity… what has emerged this season is not simply a beautiful butterfly to be admired and then discarded with the change of the season but, hopefully, a killer insect mounted with 360º swivelling gun turrets and fortified steel plates for a hitherto soft underbelly. Like his fellow countryman at Atletico de Madrid, Diego Simeone, Pochettino is moulding a team that reflects his best personality traits. There are differences in the way the Spanish capital’s most hard-working side and our beloved Spurs play, but there are similarities also – not in the least the desire to win until the very end of games and the physical fitness insisted upon to perform at the highest level. Pochettino and Simeone: two peas in a pod, despite appearances. Both managers are filtering their mentality into their squads, for Atletico this has already borne fruit – for Spurs the best may be yet still to come.

The first game of the new year provides a real test as to whether or not we are genuine top four contenders. Everton are starting a look a little bit battle weary; Spurs are at times looking like a Panzer Division fuelled on nitro-glycerine. Even when Tottenham are not at their best, they are finding a way to win using sheer mental determination and physical fortitude. Remember the Newcastle game at the Lane a few weeks ago? Neither do I. Bad memories erased by a team who seem to have learned from the mistakes they’ve made. How very un-Tottenham and how magnificently refreshing.