Lucas Moura has claimed that Tottenham are a much better team both offensively and defensively when they look to get on the ball and dictate proceedings.
Spurs were very much a counter-attacking outfit at the start of the season, with Jose Mourinho often playing two holding midfielders in Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Moussa Sissko to protect the back four.
The North Londoners often preferred to let the opposition have the ball and hit them on the break quickly when they won possession.
It was a tactic that worked well until December, with Spurs boasting a good defensive record and sitting at the top of the Premier League table at the time.
However, things went downhill from there as the Lilywhites started leaking goals at the back and found it difficult to create too much going forward.
Mourinho has seemingly decided to release the shackles in recent weeks by starting the likes of Son, Kane, Moura and Bale together and asking his team to press the opposition high up the pitch.
Tottenham seemed to have turned a corner as a result and Moura believes that an attacking approach would serve the team much better in the long run given the kind of talent in the squad.
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When asked whether Spurs are at their best when they attack, the Brazilian told The Daily Star: “Yes of course. For me, we have unbelievable players, we have creative players.
“We need to keep the ball to dictate games. The most important thing is we make use of these players in every game.
“We have so much quality and if we keep the ball and attack we lessen the risk of teams coming at us and they can win the game for us.
“I think the main thing was the mentality because we just needed to have the belief in ourselves.
“We needed to know how good we are because we have terrific players, a very good squad and the quality in the Premier League to win games.
“When we realise that and we have confidence we are able to dominate games.”
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In fairness to Mourinho, I felt he moved away from the counter-attacking approach in late January when he realised that we were having issues creating chances.
However, results failed to turn around immediately, partly because we were continuing to concede poor goals. Over the past few weeks, we seem to have found the right balance between defence and attack and confidence seems to have returned to the squad.
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