Mauricio Pochettino hopes Christian Eriksen will commit future to Tottenham
"Timing for him and the club and agreeing something are maybe different to other players. I hope he will be here in the future."
Wednesday 24 April 2019 11:09, UK
Mauricio Pochettino is hopeful Christian Eriksen will commit his long-term future to Tottenham after his match-winning performance against Brighton.
Eriksen struck an 89th-minute winning goal for Spurs, who took control of the race for the top four with a win against Brighton.
The Denmark international has scored eight goals and recorded 17 assists this season as his importance to Pochettino's side is clear to see. In total, he has scored 47 goals and provided 60 assists in 202 Premier League appearances for the club.
However, the 27-year-old's deal with Spurs is set to expire in 2020 and there has been speculation linking him with a summer move to Real Madrid.
Pochettino remains calm about the situation and is hopeful Eriksen will sign a deal in the summer.
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He said: "It is a situation that is a very special situation, Christian is a special person, I think we are all special, different and we need to understand that.
"The timing for him or for the club to be agreeing something are maybe different to another player.
"I hope and I wish Christian can be with us in the future but I think Christian and us we are so open to talk and we will see what happens.
"I think it is so close to the end of the season, a lot of time to talk after and I think the most important thing now, not only for him, is for all the players to be focused and try to achieve the things we want.
"We have a lot of big things ahead and we need to be focused only to try and recover, train and compete."
Eriksen broke Brighton's determined resistance with a stinging long-range effort, which was Spurs' 21st effort from outside the area on the night.
Pochettino explained it was a tactical decision to shoot from range more in the second half after Brighton dealt with the threat of their wide men in the opening 45 minutes.
"When the opponent plays so deep it is tough to penetrate - we played wide in the first half," he said.
"They defended really well. We found an alternative and one of the ways was to shoot from outside the box.
"That is football, if you try, try, try you can get reward - it's unlucky for Brighton."
Eriksen: I saw it fly in!
The match-winner told Sky Sports: "I had a few warm-up shots before but Ryan did very well and I just saw it fly in! We had a lot of chances and it was very important for us to remain in third after the result against Manchester City.
"There were so many people in the box the whole time, it was a long and a tough game. We need to keep the pressure on the other teams around us, we saw the other results and in order to stay in third we need to win."
