Five years, over 200 appearances, so many incredible highs and a few crushing lows, Eric Dier has been a constant in this team since arriving at the same time as Mauricio Pochettino ahead of the 2014/15 season. He cares, is hurt by recent results and determined to help put matters right.

Still only 25, Eric, who has proudly worn the armband for Club and country, was consistency personified before illness and injury restricted him to 28 appearances last season. Indeed, he featured in 146 of our 161 matches in all competitions across the 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons, a record he’s rightly proud of.

After a tough start this time around, he’s back, fit and focussed as we look to pick up the pieces from recent defeats against Colchester United in the League Cup, Bayern Munich in the Champions League and Brighton last time out in the Premier League.

“To be honest, after Brighton, I wanted to play again the next day,” he reflected at Hotspur Way after training on Tuesday. “It’s never nice going into an international break on that note and having to wait this long.

“At the same time, it gives you time to settle and put your emotions in the right place. Hopefully that’s what we’ll do, and we can all push through this as a Club. We need everyone - players, staff, fans - to stand up and push through this.

“For me, the main thing is we’ve been working all together – okay, some people have gone, some people have come in - but working all together over the last five years to get to the point where this is the conversation when you lose two games on the trot.

“We’ve wanted to get to the point where we are considered a team that if you lose two games like that, you come in for a lot of criticism. Now, we have to embrace the situation.

“We’ve got to this point and now we need to... as I said to the press after the Brighton game, we can’t back down, we need to push forward, push through it, fight through it, everyone together.