The Tottenham captain, Hugo Lloris, has warned his teammates of the need to avoid early-season slip-ups if they want to be competitive this season.
For the second season in a row, Spurs managed to get three points away to Newcastle in their opening game, but last campaign Tottenham would go on to lose the next two fixtures.
Last season’s early losses came against the likes of Burnley and Chelsea. Spurs have actually been unable to take more than five points from their opening three games over the past three seasons.
When you consider that in that time Tottenham have finished third twice and second to Chelsea in 2016/17, these opening games could be the secret to taking their game to the next level.
World Cup winning captain Lloris wants to see something different from his team this time around.
“It’s important to keep focused on your work and your performance because you cannot lose points easily in the first few games, like we used to do. It’s important together to start in the right way, like we did on Saturday.
“Now, we know Wembley quite well and hopefully it will be another good performance from us. Fulham have plenty of good players and they will be very excited to play in Wembley. It’s not an easy game, but we’ll make sure our minds will be ready again.”
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Despite only achieving a third-place finish in the 2017/18 season, Lloris insists that there were big positives to take from the campaign as a whole.
“We’re all professionals and we all love football,” Lloris said. “It’s our passion before our job. It’s always a pleasure to be together and start the week with a fresh mind.
“In three weeks, it’s difficult to really have a proper rest, and the last season was long. But it was very positive for all of us and we need to use the experience of last season and put it into our team, because we have great games ahead of us in the Champions League, the Premier League, the League Cup. There’s plenty of opportunities for winning trophies.”
When referring to the opening day win at Newcastle, the Frenchman spoke of the togetherness in the team, a willingness ‘to die for each other.’
“We know each other well and in the Premier League you cannot switch off. It’s impossible. You look at Saturday, Newcastle is a hard place to visit.
“We tried our best, some players after just one week [back with the squad], and finally we got the result we needed because of the spirit, because we were ready to die for each other.”
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