Poch: Spurs have right balance and hunger for titles

Mark Holmes
Tottenham: Tipped to win in latest Premier League predictions

Tottenham: Tipped to win in latest Premier League predictions

Mauricio Pochettino believes Tottenham have the perfect balance between youth and experience to challenge for the Premier League title.

Spurs are five points off the top of the Premier League with 15 games to play and into the fifth round of the FA Cup following Saturday’s 4-1 win at Colchester.

“It is a topic in football. We need to try to demonstrate that it is not true,” said Pochettino regarding the notion that Spurs’ squad is too inexperienced to challenge for major honours.

“We have signed young players, but we have very experienced players (too). I think the balance that we have is very good.

“It is true that we started to build a team from one year ago, or six months ago, and that the team have started to play how we want in the last six, seven months.

“This is a new project, a different project and there are a lot of examples with maybe a more experienced team in the Premier League.

“(But) the most important thing is to balance the younger (players) with the experience players to create the winning mentality and to have hunger to win titles.”

Pochettino pointed to experienced players like France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, Belgian pair Moussa Dembele and Jan Vertonghen and those in their early twenties, including the likes of Danny Rose, Kyle Walker and Nacer Chadli, who scored twice on Saturday.

“It is true that we have a lot of younger players but (they are) the right ‘younger’ as they have a very strong mentality and they are hungry,” Pochettino added.

“Sometimes you have a lot of older experienced players who have won a lot of titles without hunger.

“It is always important, the balance. We need to have senior players who are hungry and young ones that push a lot and want to win the title.”