Lamela: Tottenham have belief to win Premier League title

Erik Lamela insists Tottenham have the required mentality to win the Premier League this season.

Spurs currently sit fourth in the table and are six points behind leaders Arsenal, amid talk this could be the year they challenge for the title.

Tottenham have always been renown for possessing plenty of quality and yet have often been guilty of falling short in crucial encounters, but Lamela suggests this is no longer the case with the current crop of players.

“Everything is possible if you believe and I think this team really believes. So if this team wants to, it can. We will see at the end of it if it is going to happen but we will give our best,” he said.

“We have only lost two [league] games and we know that if we continue like this then we are equal to any other team. Hopefully, God willing, we can win a trophy and we can close the season in a nice way.

“We have a young team, an ambitious team and we all have the same goal. Our training focuses very much on concentration. He [manager Mauricio Pochettino] does not let us not be focused. That is really important.”

Lamela joined Tottenham in a club-record £30million deal in 2013 but initially failed to live up to expectations.

The former Roma winger made only 17 appearances in his first season in England, scoring just once, before being more heavily involved last term.

This campaign the 23-year-old has emerged as a key player under manager Pochettino, and Lamela admits he now feels comfortable with English football.

“I have adapted and I am certainly now more used to the club, the league, the country and so that has inevitably meant that I can play better,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“But I don’t necessarily think it something that takes time. What is true is that I got off to a very difficult start with a long injury that led to other difficulties.

“I tried to do my best but maybe, yes, there were higher expectations because the club had paid a big sum for me. I was aware of that and just wanted to train well and work my way through it.

“It was not such a big change from Italy. The leagues are different but a player can adapt but only if things are going well for him on a physical level and that bad injury made a big difference to me.

“It came less than three months after I had started and so for the first year here I only played for maybe two months. In a sense that first year went fast because it was over so quickly. But the injury took six, seven months. I tried to recover and did my best to get back but my body was just not working like that so it felt like I was out for years.

“In Italy the football is perhaps more tactical. Whereas here there is more ‘vertical’ play and, yes, it is physical too. It is more challenging with the referees let us play for longer but I like that and I really like the games where there is lots of ‘friction’.”

Throughout his time in north London, the Argentina international has regularly been linked with a return to Serie A, and appeared to be on his way out of the club last summer.

However, Lamela insists he was never interested in leaving Spurs.

“From the first moment my head was always in this club,” he added.

“There were always rumours, always talk of possibilities to change club, but the people received me really well here and I want to give that back.”