Sometimes we don’t finish off games, says Erik Lamela

It looks like a distinct period now but it surely was solely 11 months again when Tottenham sacked supervisor Mauricio Pochettino and changed him with Jose Mourinho. The North London membership had reached the Champions League closing, which they misplaced to Liverpool, lower than half a 12 months previous to that. However, a tumultuous begin to the brand new season noticed Spurs pull the plug on the Argentine’s five-and-a-half-year reign on the membership.

Speaking to a gaggle of journalists throughout a video interplay on Amazon’s documentary sequence on the membership, titled ‘All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur’, Spurs’ Argentine star Erik Lamela stated the 24-hour interval inside which the managerial change was made had left the gamers stunned.

“When he left the club after five years, it was a surprise for us because we didn’t expect that. It was difficult for the players. We were talking between us and we couldn’t believe it. There are a lot of great memories working together with him, which is shared by everyone in the team,” Lamela, 28, stated of his compatriot.

“We knew each other well, so it was difficult as I said. But the day after, we didn’t have time to think about it. The day after, everyone was ready to start a new era and change the mentality as a team and try to win the next game. Football is always like that. We didn’t have much time to think about it; we needed to win the next game.”

The Argentine winger stated excessive expectations might have affected Spurs in the course of the poor begin to final season. “It’s very difficult to reach the Champions League final. When you do, the expectations are high after that. And that is what happened with us; the season after, everyone expected us to be on top form again. But that season was difficult for us from the beginning – a lot of injuries, a lot of players missing and we didn’t have luck in many games too, with VAR or other things,” he stated.

Being a part of the documentary was an uncommon expertise for the gamers on the membership and Lamela stated it felt uncommon with the cameras round. “At the beginning it was strange because we were not used to cameras recording us all the time. But after a while, in the middle of the season, it felt normal. We forgot about the cameras,” he defined.

Lamela additionally described Mourinho’s arrival on the membership the day after Pochettino’s arrival as ‘strange’ however added that the Portuguese supervisor has come throughout as ‘a very nice person, always very honest with the players’. “He is a big manager. Everyone knows him. That moment (when he joined) was very strange for us because we didn’t know much about the situation at the club. As professionals, we were all pushing in the same way. At that moment, the team wasn’t doing great and everyone was just trying to change that,” Lamela stated.

Asked about his ideas on Mourinho’s speech within the documentary the place he calls upon his gamers to be ‘bastards’ on the pitch for 90 minutes, Lamela replied: “Whenever a manager says something, then I think it’s because it’s a point of view that the players maybe do not have. I think for the team, sometimes there are times where we need to finish off games but we don’t do. We need to be clever in different aspects – keeping the ball, winning a foul and many different situations. And that was what he was talking about.”

Spurs haven’t received a trophy since their League Cup victory in 2008 however Lamela stated the membership now has a squad robust sufficient to compete for main honours. Tottenham signed midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, full-back Sergio Reguilon and back-up goalkeeper Joe Hart this summer season whereas Gareth Bale returned on a season-long mortgage from Real Madrid.

“We have a very good team now. The squad is big, a lot of players in every position. The competition for places is higher, and that’s good because there are a lot of games coming in all the competitions. And this is what we want – to try to really win something this season, but we need to go game by game, month by month. There will be many games every week, every month for us, so we have to be calm and just try to win the next game,” he stated.