Over the past couple of seasons, a lot has been made of the emerging youth at White Hart Lane, and rightly so. Players like Deli Alli, Eric Dier, Nabil Bentaleb and of course our lord and saviour Harry Kane have come into the first team at young age in footballing terms, and have excelled.

However, I am of the opinion that not enough has been made of the fact that although our youthful players are those drawing the most excitement, the core of the team, and those deserving of a lot of credit, are also the slightly older players. Spurs would not be half the team they have been this (and some of last) season, without the likes of Hugo Lloris, the combination of Toby Alderweireld & Jan Vertonghen, and players such as Mousa Dembele.

This is not to say that they haven’t been appreciated within Spurs supporter circles; the spurs reddit site (reddit.com/r/coys) highly rates such players, but there hasn’t seemed to be much of a media appreciation of, what I think, is the core of the team.

Even the team itself seems to be trying to right this wrong – Deli Alli has come out with strong praise for Dembele (http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/tottenhams-mousa-dembele-is-one-of-the-strongest-guys-in-the-world-says-dele-alli-a3159551.html) after another strong performance against Sunderland.

I was at the game at the weekend and you can immediately tell what an impact Mousa has in particular. The team looked so much more confident with him in the side than without. In two out of the three defeats (!) this season, Dembele wasn’t playing.

Behind him, and one of the key reasons this season has gone well so far, is the trio of Lloris, Alderweireld and Vertonghen. When we signed Hugo and Jan, I was immediately more confident in our defence. Although in recent seasons we have had a gaping hole in quality to partner Vertonghen, this season’s signing of Alderweireld has completed the defence. We now boast a goal difference of +20, which is ludicrous, and second only to Manchester City’s just as ludicrously priced team.

I’m not sure quite how to end this piece other than to reiterate the point, believe in Spurs’ oldth!