Opinion: Analysing Joe Hart’s importance to Tottenham Hotspur

While many mocked Joe Hart’s move to Spurs over the summer, the veteran keeper has brought a lot to this dressing room, with his leadership and experience being the most important attributes.

One of the low points in the current Spurs squad is in central defence. They often seem as though they don’t know what they are supposed to be doing throughout the match.

However, that is not the case when Hart is in goal. His leadership has arguably helped Davinson Sanchez and Japhet Tanganga, among others, to remain calm at the back.

While at Spurs, Joe Hart has started in the debuts of Alfie Devine, Dane Scarlett, Harvey White, Alfie Whiteman, Marcel Lavinier, and Nile John.

Hart’s commanding presence in the back no doubt settled the youngster’s nerves and helped them to make good impressions on the coaching staff.

While an unproven claim, I can also imagine that Hart is full of encouragement, advice and anecdotes from his own successful career, something that is always valuable for less experienced players coming through.

Hart has won the Premier League with Man City and filling your changing room with big title winners certainly does no harm to the squad confidence.

In fact, in a recent video posted by the club, Bale, Doherty, and Højbjerg agreed that Hart was the player that got the most “hyped” before matches. This energy must be infectious and spread to the other players before the game has even begun.

Another key aspect of Hart’s presence in the squad is the fact that he is English and homegrown. With Spurs foreign player issues, it was a smart move by Mourinho and Levy to bring in an English backup keeper.

Before Hart, we had Gazzaniga and Vorm as backups, both of which took up foreign player slots as they are from Argentina and the Netherlands respectively.

While World-Cup-winner and club captain Hugo Lloris is no doubt a better player than Hart, it is pivotal that we keep him at the club in order to continue being a leader on and off the pitch.

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