Norwich City’s ‘crazy’ defeat to Liverpool does not fool Spurs boss Pochettino

The Argentine boss has told his young squad to expect a strong response from Norwich after a 10-day break since the 5-4 defeat to Liverpool.

'That was a crazy game,' he said. 'In football this type of game can happen sometimes. For that, football is very attractive. It is difficult to analyse as in football to score you need to make a mistake. (But) we analysed the last few games from Norwich and they are very difficult to play. We know Norwich is a team that had 10 days to prepare for our game, but our mentality is good, we are strong and we need to compete. We arrive in a very good condition to compete on Tuesday.'

Confidence is sky high in the Spurs' camp after a routine FA Cup fourth round 4-1 win at Colchester on Saturday. Tottenham arrive at Carrow Road five points behind leaders Leicester City and also in the later stages of the Europa League in what promises to be a hectic finale to the campaign. Highly-rated young England international Dele Alli is poised to return to the starting line-up tonight as Pochettino's men look to extend their unbeaten 10-match away run.

'We are ready to compete Tuesday and then on Saturday (against Watford), again. The spirit in the squad is fantastic. We need to keep the momentum and try to win the next game,' he said. 'I believe in my players and the squad we have to fight in every game. We have signed young players but we have experience (too).

'I think the balance that we have is very good. It is true that we started to build a team from one year ago, or six months ago, and that the team have started to play how we want in the last six, seven months. This is a new project, a different project and there are a lot of examples in the Premier League with maybe a more experienced team. The most important thing is to balance the younger (players) with the experience to create the winning mentality and to have that hunger to win titles.'