Eric Dier has revealed that he wanted to be back on the pitch 24 hours after Spurs had lost 3-0 at Brighton & Hove Albion prior to the international break.
Only featuring in two games for the Lilywhites ahead of their trip to the south coast, the England international came back into the side and started in midfield.
With many believing that the return of Dier would give the team a much-needed defensive shield in front of the backline, Spurs were in fact lucky to leave the Amex having only conceded the three goals.
The result capped off a dreadful week for Tottenham after they had lost 7-2 against Bayern Munich four days earlier in the Champions League.
Spurs are now looking to get back on track this weekend against Watford and Dier has called on everyone connected with the club to push through their recent struggles so that they can start moving up the league table.
"To be honest, after Brighton, I wanted to play again the next day," he told the club's official website. "It’s never nice going into an international break on that note and having to wait this long.
"At the same time, it gives you time to settle and put your emotions in the right place. Hopefully that’s what we’ll do, and we can all push through this as a Club. We need everyone - players, staff, fans - to stand up and push through this.
"For me, the main thing is we’ve been working all together – okay, some people have gone, some people have come in - but working all together over the last five years to get to the point where this is the conversation when you lose two games on the trot.
"We’ve wanted to get to the point where we are considered a team that if you lose two games like that, you come in for a lot of criticism. Now, we have to embrace the situation.
"We’ve got to this point and now we need to... as I said to the press after the Brighton game, we can’t back down, we need to push forward, push through it, fight through it, everyone together.
"I really feel the mentality in the building is ‘let’s fight through this’. I don’t want us to be one of those teams that allows a situation like this escalate and eventually bring us down. I want us to all stand up and push through it and that’s the feeling from everyone here. We’re a very realistic group, very realistic about our situation and we know we need to do better."
