Sunday 6 November 2016 15:59, UK
Mauricio Pochettino insists he is delighted with Tottenham's start to the season, despite admitting that his squad is "short".
Tottenham continued their unbeaten start to the Premier League campaign with a 1-1 draw in the north London derby against Arsenal on Sunday, Harry Kane's penalty cancelling out Kevin Wimmer's own goal at the Emirates.
Pochettino says his side have suffered injury issues this season, with Dele Alli the latest concern with a knee problem, but acknowledges he can only smile at the unbeaten start.
"All the teams have good or bad moments in the season. If you suffer bad moments and are unbeaten you can only smile. Because I am happy," the Tottenham manager said.
"There are many small problems. Now we have two weeks to recover all the players. When you compete in the Champions League and the Premier League, for me they are both the toughest competitions in the world and we need all the squad fit.
"We have a short squad and we suffered some issues. We have had to play with the same players and we cannot rotate the way we'd like to rotate the players to give freshness and arrive in better conditions.
"But I'm very happy with how we have finished now. It feels fantastic."
Tottenham went to a back three at the Emirates, a style that was unsuccessfully trialled by Everton manager Ronald Koeman on Saturday in their 5-0 defeat by Chelsea.
The system worked for Spurs on Sunday, and Pochettino says it is vital for his side to be flexible throughout the season with tactics.
"Today in football you need to be flexible. In the last moment we had some small problems and you always need to adapt your system and game," he said.
"We worked a lot to find a better solution in the offensive areas. We try to always think about the opposition goal, playing with another striker and one player in behind to try and have more opportunities to create chances to win the game. But in football it's all about trying to find these solutions.
"Chelsea played here if you remember and he started with a back-four. Then after 3-0 on 60 minutes they changed to three centre-backs. But if you remember too last season we played Watford on December 28 we played three centre-backs how we played today.
"Because Chelsea won yesterday 5-0 they discovered the system. I think it's a good system to use depending on the players. All the team can play in different systems. But nobody owns this system."
