Bridge of sighs leads to Dier's N17 high...

No doubt like many Spurs fans, Eric Dier’s mind went back to January, 2019 as our Carabao Cup fourth round tie against Chelsea went to a penalty shoot-out on Tuesday night - motivation for him to step up, bury the first spot-kick and banish those blues.

Successful in England’s World Cup shoot-out against Colombia in 2018, Eric missed from the spot in the second leg of our Carabao Cup semi-final at Stamford Bridge after the tie had ended 2-2 on aggregate.

Lucas also missed that night, but both were successful this time around as we scored five out of five - Erik Lamela, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Harry Kane also on target - before Mason Mount clipped the outside of the post.

It was just reward for a fine team performance as we recovered from Timo Werner’s strike on 20 minutes to dominate the second half. Debutant Sergio Reguilon provided the assist for Lamela to bury the equaliser late on before hitting 100 per cent from the spot.

“My mind was going back to that night (at Stamford Bridge) as well,” said Eric. “That’s why I wanted to take one, I was desperate to take one to put things right from that night.

“We’ve practiced and it’s something we’ve done a lot more after training, and that’s credit to the full squad, Joe Hart, Paulo, they stay out there after training, facing penalties from seven, eight, nine guys, they stay out there and it’s those little things that people don’t see that make all the difference.”

Eric drew praise from Jose Mourinho for completing a second 90 minutes in three days after playing against Newcastle on Sunday. He was joined by debutant Sergio plus the likes of Gedson and Japhet Tanganga making their first appearances of the season.

“For me, and I told him (Jose) this morning, it’s a game I love to play in and I want to play in,” said Eric. “It was obviously a quick turn around and full credit to the staff, all the players... for some players it was their first game of the season, for others, maybe a difficult start to the season where they’ve not played as many games as they would have wanted to.

“To put in the performance everyone did tonight was fantastic. I think it’s down to the quality we know we have, and to play with that character and personality is fantastic, after doing it like this, there are no excuses that we shouldn’t be trying to perform always at this level.

“I don’t think anyone could argue that we were the better team. Now we need to take that into Thursday and into Sunday. That’s the bar and we need to continue to play to that level.”