Mauricio Pochettino will have spent the past few days hammering home positive messages to his men.
That today’s clash with Liverpool is their chance to exact revenge for June’s Champions League final defeat and put a dent in the Reds’ hopes of winning the title.
He will be selling this game as, “Our season starts here”, and telling Spurs’ dressing room, “If we can beat these, we can beat anybody”.
The problem for Pochettino, however, is that Liverpool look like they can deal with all-comers at the moment and, if Spurs win, it will be one of the shocks – if not THE shock – of the season.
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That’s because Liverpool have a resilience about them and a self-belief we haven’t seen before – and they know what these games against their big-six rivals are about.
They know that if they can win a high percentage of those fixtures, they will be very difficult to beat in the title race.
And, while Spurs will be much more confident than they would have been if this game was a week or two ago after thumping Red Star Belgrade in midweek, Liverpool will still win.
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Jurgen Klopp’s men weren’t stunning against Manchester United and I know some people think it was two points dropped.
But any away point against your biggest rival is a good away point.
So they will be going into this game with plenty of confidence and I expect it to be as comfortable – if not more comfortable in terms of the scoreline – than the finale to last season.
The state Spurs have been in for a little while now is arguably a result of what happened in the Champions League final.
One or two players look like they had their heads turned, and one or two look like they’ve been thinking that was as high as it is going to get.
There has been a lot of soul-searching within Spurs.
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And being at home and the traditional dominance over Tottenham at Anfield, which stretches back to my time there, will help Liverpool.
If you had asked me a year ago which manager I’d have rather played for between Klopp and Pochettino, I’d have said Poch every time.
But that has changed now because I like the way the Liverpool boss has responded when he has been tested.
He seems to be a guy whose force of will and character mean he broods a little before shrugging off his problems and going again. Whereas Pochettino has looked a little forlorn since the summer.
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This is arguably the first time he has had a real test in England and he looks a bit dishevelled from it, a little flat, something we’ve never really seen from Klopp.
Poch was almost on superhero levels as far as I could tell for a while, he kept calm and kept smiling.
But this season he hasn’t been any near as effervescent as the German.
If Klopp goes on to deliver the title, then he is edging towards being talked about among the very best.
If Pochettino is going to be talked about in those same terms, however, he is going to have to do it at a club where the expectation is to deliver trophies – and not just compete.
