Weaknesses will resurface under pressure

Disappointing wasn't it.

Our Achilles heel strikes again.

Mauricio Pochettino knows it and I have been writing about it for years, mentality.

To a coach the problem is clear, where I differ from Mauricio is in how to deal with it.

It as his role to find a solution.

My solution for Spurs is long-term, it isn#t something you can turn on and turn off.

Yes, sports psychologists have been used by individuals before, sometimes by players who kept it secret from their club who wouldn't have approved. Indeed I read a very good article from a former Middlesborough player who achieved his aims of playing international football, thanks to his psychologist that he said the club would never have allowed, had they known he was using one.

In reality, that means the coach wouldn't have approved and that is at the heart of the problem in football.

The art of management is not to do everything yourself, but know where to get the solutions, fitness coaches for fitness, nutritionists for food intake, etc.

A manager has a basic understanding of psychology and can only develop players mentally within those confines, thus when a problem arises, like the one we have, there is nothing in place to deal with it and indeed there are no preventative measures to stop it happening in the first place.

Thus we flounder along until the players sort it themselves if they can. Poch has to select the motivated ones who want to be here and hope leaving out those who want to leave will damage their pride and force them into performing.

Psychology has not been embraced by the sport on a consistent basis. England have tried them at major tournaments where someone has been brought in as a miracle worker almost. That is never going to work over a short period.

Would it not help the club to know what motivates Christian Eriksen, Erik Lamela, Serge Aurier, Danny Rose or any other player? Wouldn't it help to know what their fears are?

After all, these are part of the barriers holding them back.

Christian Eriksen, in his previous games, looked as if he has just gone out and done whatever he felt like and he showed no desire against Liverpool either. It looked, once again, as if he couldn't care less.

Once again he didn't turn up in a big game and it came as no surprise to me to hear that Lionel Messi thought he had the wrong mentality and didn't want him at Barcelona.

How is his attitude going to get him a move to a top club, unless he has already agreed to join Juventus on a free transfer next summer?

Why else would he show how ordinary he is to other clubs while other players around the world are showing more in his position? He reduces what he is worth in wages too as well as losing his match fitness by not playing regularly.

Juventus have a history of signing quality players on free transfers, pick the bones out of these 16:

• 2008: Olof Mellberg (Aston Villa)
• 2009: Fabio Cannavaro (Real Madrid)
• 2011: Andrea Pirlo (AC Milan)
• 2011: Luca Toni (Genoa)
• 2011: Reto Ziegler (Sampdoria)
• 2012: Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
• 2012: Lucio (Inter Milan)
• 2013: Fernando Llorente (Athletic Bilbao)
• 2014: Kingsley Coman (PSG)
• 2015: Neto (Fiorentina)
• 2015: Sami Khedira (Real Madrid)
• 2016: Dani Alves (Barcelona)
• 2018: Emre Can (Liverpool)
• 2019: Aaron Ramsey (Arsenal)
• 2019: Adrien Rabiot (PSG)
• 2019: Gianluigi Buffon (PSG)

You only have to look when players want a manager sacked that they stop playing for him, as both Chelsea and Manchester United did with Jose Mourinho. Chelsea immediately returned to their former selves when Mourinho was shown the door.

You shouldn't need any more proof than that that motivation is a key factor in performance. Without it, you simply don't get the same level.

It requires all to be motivated, as just a few not motivated affects the whole group and the remaining group can't play every game, they need rest. Ask yourself, you have Harry Winks putting every effort in and a guy beside him putting half an effort in, what would be the result?

Add in a few players coming back from injury so not really up to speed yet, a player playing totally out of position and you have a recipe for disaster.

We are getting leads and regularly throwing them away. That affects you mentally the next time you go in front, unless you have mental strategies to cope with it.

Our players don't, they are left to their own devices. That's fine if they have the mentality of Cristiano Ronaldo or Harry Kane, it isn't much use if they have the mentality of Danny Rose or Serge Aurier.

But, that doesn't eradicate the underlying motivation and mentality issue, the two are tied together.

I want to see a breed of highly motivated players with trained mentalities competing. I'm convinced they would take us to another level and attract the best young talent from around the world. No other club is developing players mentally.

Waiting for someone else to innovate and us to follow isn't going to make us an attractive proposition in the long run or keep us punching above our weight.

We train in everything else, we provide the best nutritional advice, we analyze when athletes are in optimum condition and manage them to maintain a high level, yet with the mind, we take, well, an amateurish approach.

Yes people learn from their mistakes or they can and all success is achieved after failure, yes we have shown a great attitude in the Champions League, but there is the Premier League and domestic cups too where we have let ourselves down.

Is the mind really something we should leave to chance and hope the Harry Kane's and Gareth Bale's of this world come along or should we develop players to have their mentalities?

Few people know what actually motivates them, you probably don't. People think they do but it's a fallacy. If they did they would be achieving more than they are!

Many will tell you it's money but money is rarely a motivator, there is usually something else. It is that that needs uncovering in everyone.

To be a ruthless winner takes a certain mentality, until we have a squad with that mentality we will be challenging for the trophies and not winning them.

We wouldn't be in the situation we were in if we knew what motivated each individual and were tapping into that. We wouldn't be in the position we are in now if we were properly mentally training the players with sports psychologists.

We could have addressed the mental issues, whether players stayed or left.

Now all we have is hope, but the trouble is you can see the players panic under pressure. It won't take one or two games to get out of this because the mental weaknesses are there and will keep resurfacing.

You find out what you have when you are under pressure, not when everything is going swimmingly. I maintain we should have found out the answer to that problem before it happened and have put steps in place to stop it occurring.

The fact we haven't has come to haunt us.

You have all seen evidence of it. You have all seen stupid decisions under pressure, we saw two from Rose and Aurier last week that cost us victory. We saw it against Leicester, Arsenal, Olympiacos, we have seen it again and again.

A change of manager isn't going to change the basic flaws in some of our players, proper treatment is or we just replace them with other flawed players and hope their flaws are not as bad as those we have.

Without psychologically assessing them we aren't going to know, we'll be taking a guess.

We have the ability to win any game, we have the mentality to lose any game.