Confidence makes a diference


Fans tend to go overboard, we are either brilliant or useless. We have just played two awful sides and taken them apart, yet just a couple of games ago we were apparently if crisis if you listen to some of them.

Confidence has been dismissed in other quarters, clearly from someone who has never played any sport at any sort of level. Confidence is a massive factor as it frees you to play in a manner that you don't play with when you are down on confidence.

When lacking confidence you fall back into default mode, you play to not make mistakes and that means more sideways passing and less risky creative passing. We could see it with Eriksen yesterday. He was chipping over the defence and playing far more creative balls than previously. When you are confident you don't mind making a mistake, when you lack confidence you play not wanting to make a mistake, which puts you in a safe defensive mindset.

Confidence is key in any sport. You only have to look at a striker going through a barren patch. Soldado has banged in goals his whole career, but as a bit part player he totally lost confidence and snatched at sitters, Janssen is going through the same at the moment, harry Kane has been through a couple of barren spells, the last one ended when he was in the right place for a tap-in.

Mauricio Pochettino felt confidence was returning prior to this game and was happy with the performance at Wembley.

"We are starting to show our real quality. We struggled in the last month and a half because we have some problems, but we have all the squad nearly fit and we are stronger. 
"You can feel the team is recovering that feeling that we can win every game. We have recovered that feeling maybe that we lost when it's true, it was a bit of a struggle to compete. 
"We need all the players fit to be strong and to compete in tough competitions like the Premier League and Champions League and it was unlucky that our struggle arrived in a busy period with important games. 
"I am happy. The performance was good, the fact that we won here was important for us, to change that feeling that we had after Monaco and Leverkusen was important and I think we are much better, we are playing better and starting to show our real quality. 
"We need to look ahead and continue to play more games here to make Wembley our home, that is very important."

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