Tottenham Hotspur striker Harry Kane's transformation into a football superstar has been one of the game's great stories in recent years and one man more than played his part in helping in his emergence on to the world stage.

Sports nutritionist Matt Lovell can boast a CV packed full of success. He was part of the set-up when England lifted the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and later reached the final in 2007. He also worked with plenty of athletes in the build up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.

In football, the 46-year-old has been employed by the likes of Manchester City, the FA, Aston Villa and currently works with Swansea City and Bournemouth.

However, it was his seven years as a consultant nutritionist at Tottenham, working under the likes of Harry Redknapp, Andre Villas-Boas and Mauricio Pochettino where he oversaw plenty of stars emerging as well as a new belief in sports science within the game.

"I started with Harry Redknapp when they were back at the old training ground in Chigwell in 2010. I spent time with Ledley King and a few other players. They test you out on players with an injury history. If that goes well then they bring you into the fold and you work with the rest of the squad," Lovell explained to football.london.

Lovell, who has helped design a new range of award-winning new high protein smoothie kits for PACK'D, explained the difference between the three permanent managers during his seven years working with the north London side.

"Harry was a sweat and sawdust, old school, quality English manager. You knew where you were with him. AVB was a bit more elusive from my perspective. Pochettino is absolutely on it, he's so focused," he explained.

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"Jesus [Perez, Pochettino's assistant manager] is the man who will come down and if the fat scores are off he will be giving the players some serious trouble. He's a lovely fella, but he's fierce."

The nutritionist's role involves running a battery of tests, leaving no room for players to sneak around the fitness standards required of them.

"One of my responsibilities was skin-folding the squad, body composition testing effectively. Spurs are a team that put a lot of emphasis on that part of performance," he said.

"If a player is testing even a tiny bit higher on body fat the management will know about it and there will be pressure put on the player to get as lean as they possibly can.

"If a player is not looking after themselves in terms of lifestyle and diet, one of the first places you see that is with a small accumulation in some belly fat.

"It might be they're choosing the wrong food groups or having a few too many treats. We do all kind of tests. I was in charge of doing all the blood results, we test for every nutritional deficiency you can think of. I've got a machine that scans players for pigment in their skin that tells you how many vegetables a player is eating. They can't get away with anything."

One of Lovell's biggest successes is the part he played in two-time Golden Boot winner Kane's rise to the top after spending much of his early Spurs career out on loan.

"Without a doubt this is the fittest Spurs side I've known. You take someone like Harry Kane, who was on loan at Norwich and was essentially on the wrong side of 15 per cent body fat," he remembered.

"Then over quite a short period of time he suddenly knuckled down, lost all the fat and got down to round about 10 per cent and now he's banging in the goals left, right and centre. Then they're saying: "You're not going on loan anymore!"."

He added: "He's always been a strong, big lad, but from that lifestyle change, when he leaned up, it correlated massively with a huge increase in his performance.

"I played a big part in that, but I would add that he has his own helper as well. In the last couple of years he started on a whole load of different things with him, an old friend of his who knows a bit about it all. He's started Harry on a few things that were things I wanted to start the whole squad on anyway. It was a help rather than a hindrance."

What other players are among the top physical specimens at Tottenham? A certain Dane and England's newest captain sit high up the list at a club that believes highly in sports science - with Pochettino's own son Sebastian a sports scientist working with the first team.

"Christian Eriksen is an amazing athlete. Eric Dier also is a workhorse. They're all great," said Lovell.

"The way the club is run is so professional. One of the things they've got is that the management listen to the sports science department so training is all integrated. It's not like you've got two separate things going on.

"They know how long they can train them on the pitch and when they need to rest. They'll spend more time in the gym and doing things in an altitude chamber. Another team might be on the pitch all the time and then the players just get tired and stale, but when you rotate them through different types of activity it enhances their recovery.

"They stay strong and it means they're more injury resistant and then you can challenge different aspects of their fitness by putting them in the altitude chamber. It gives you the benefit on the pitch."

Lovell speaks in glowing terms about his years with Tottenham and is hoping he can bring some of that magic with him in his new role helping Eddie Howe and Paul Clement in their Premier League adventures.

"I was with Spurs until the end of the 2016/17 season. I was pretty gutted to move on, it's just the nature of the beast," he explained. "It was really good fun. They brought in three new nutritionists, which is good and shows how important they see that area."

Lovell will always keep one eye on developments at Spurs, a club at the cutting edge of sports science, and the fans will be hoping that Pochettino's lean, mean fighting machines will soon bring some silverware to the club, consuming all others in their path.

PACK’D have launched a trio of Frozen Protein Smoothie Kits, designed with Matt Lovell and set to reinvent the traditional protein shake. The new range - Cherry Choc PROTEIN+, Apple Crumble PROTEIN REFUEL and Strawberry Shake PROTEIN PERFORM launch into the freezer aisles of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Ocado this month, which coincides with the introduction of PACK’D’s new e-commerce site, with customers able to buy the full range direct and get more info at www.packd.co.uk.