An article by ESPN.com says Mauricio Pochettino hopes our relaxed festive schedule will give him the chance to introduce “new concepts” to his summer signings and spark a successful second half of the season.
We host Brighton on Wednesday before taking on runaway league leaders Manchester City on Saturday.
The article adds that we then have a week off to prepare for a trip to fourth-placed Burnley on Dec. 23, with another week-long break after Southampton visit Wembley on Boxing Day.
The article adds how we had been due to play West Ham on New Year’s Eve but the game has been moved to Jan 4th, meaning we face three fixtures in five days at the start of next year.
It explains how Pochettino blamed our poor form on late summer transfer business, and said he hoped to use the festive period to further assimilate Davinson Sanchez, Serge Aurier, Juan Foyth and Fernando Llorente.
“For the new players that arrived, [it’s important] to be more comfortable here, to know everything, to adapt their quality to the team,”:Pochettino told a news conference
He added: “The first six months is always difficult for the new players because we don’t have much time to work — sometimes we work only through the video because we can’t do anything on the pitch. And it’s not the same.Just today [Tuesday] we were talking about next week — it will be key for us to work with the new players, introduce different concepts that we need to improve on the team.”
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In the summer, Pochettino said the best way for his squad to improve was for key players such as Dele Alli, Harry Kane and Christian Eriksen to start to “feel competition.”
The article also explains how Pochettino said his squad had lacked competitiveness but hoped the returns of Erik Lamela and Victor Wanyama would spark another winning winter run after they won seven straight games from Dec. 14 last year.
“It’s true that for different reasons, like injuries, we’ve missed this feeling [of competition],”he said.
“Of course, in the second part of the season, if we can recover everyone — now Lamela is nearly 100 percent, or Victor Wanyama — it’s very good news for the team to have everyone at a very good level.
He added: “The second half of the season, with all the squad fit and all together, we will be more competitive. We are going to have Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League, and we need to be competitive and strong.”
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