Tottenham news: Eric Dier fears regret if Spurs miss out on trophies again

Dier, who captained Spurs on Sunday, does not want his team to pass up the chance of winning a trophy with this manager and this generation of players

Eric Dier doesn't want Spurs to endure any more misery when it comes to winning trophies (Getty)

Eric Dier does not want to look back on these years playing for Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham Hotspur with regret at never having won a trophy.

This is Dier’s third season at Spurs and in each of the first two he came painfully close to winning something. In 2015 Spurs lost the final of the Capital One Cup to Chelsea at Wembley. In 2016 they should have won the Premier League but allowed Leicester City to get away from them.

Now, after winning six games in a row, including a master-class against Chelsea last week, Spurs are looking better than ever. Going into the second half of the season they are third in the Premier League, into the last-32 of the Europa League and, having beaten Aston Villa yesterday, the fourth round of the FA Cup.

For a club which has not won a trophy for nine years, this is another crucial season for Tottenham. To miss out again, with such a good manager, and so many players playing so well, would be hard to take.

“Football is about winning trophies,” Dier said after Sunday’s game. “If you asked us later on in life and we had not won a trophy with the squad we have now, and the basis that gives us to do that if in five years’ time that had not happened then everyone would be disappointed. We have got to keep working hard and improving as there is still a lot we can work on before we reach that level, and the whole squad is desperate to win trophies.”

Last season Spurs stayed in the Europa League until March before being knocked out by Borussia Dortmund, by which point the players were too tired to maintain the same standards in the Premier League. The challenge this year will be to stay in the Europa League and FA Cup while not tiring the players, until it is clear in the spring which will be Spurs’ likeliest title.

“It’s very difficult [to compete on three fronts],” Dier said. “The FA Cup difficult, because it is a knockout, and when you play lower-league teams with nothing to lose, they will throw everything at you. In a one-off game anything can happen. But that is our aim, to stay in every competition as long as possible and fight on all fronts.”

To that end Pochettino made nine changes on Sunday from the team that steam-rollered Chelsea 2-0 on Wednesday. Dier and Toby Alderweireld were the only two who kept their places and Dier, tellingly, was made captain. This means that the first teamers – Mousa Dembele, Victor Wanyama, Harry Kane, Kyle Walker, Danny Rose, Christian Eriksen and Hugo Lloris – should be maximally fresh when West Bromwich Albion come to White Hart Lane on Saturday lunchtime.

Dier played in a midfield two with Harry Winks, at the heart of a 3-4-3 system which initially struggled to break Villa down. Only when Pochettino switched to 4-2-3-1 did they find a way through. But Dier enjoyed returning to midfield, having spent much of this season back at centre-back, either in the absence of Alderweireld, or playing on the right of a three.

Dier said that he enjoys moving around the pitch to develop his game. “I enjoy the challenge of playing different positions, learning different positions,” he said. “It’s something that will definitely help me in the future and something I’ve spoken about with the manager.”

Dier captained Spurs during Sunday's FA Cup victory over Aston Villa (Getty)

But what Dier especially enjoyed was wearing the armband, and it is not hard to see him doing it more in the future. “I hope so, maybe one day,” Dier said. “We have some fantastic captains here at the moment but I’m still young, hopefully one day maybe I will get that honour but I am focused on playing for Tottenham, nothing else.”

“Leadership doesn’t affect me. When I was younger going through age groups at Sporting I was captain. It’s not something new to me.”