“You can always get better and give more,” Lamela, still just 23, says. “If you are ambitious you can always do more. The most important thing is to work for the team because the most important thing is that the team does well together.” If that sounds like repeating words uttered to him by Pochettino then that is exactly what it is. “I do think that it’s the mentality we have in the team,” Lamela adds. “It is one that everyone goes along with. If the team doesn’t win then it means that nobody had done well. That is the mentality.” Pochettino has proved a hard task-master. Lamela is conducting this interview the day after – in mid-January – he has completed another double-training session. In the morning the squad worked together; in the afternoon the attacking players did their own work.