Mauricio Pochettino says he has used a much-needed week off to focus on “the bigger picture” with his players and to stress the importance of being mentally ready to play at full intensity every three days.

As a result of Spurs’ commitments in the Premier League, Champions League and League Cup – in addition to three international breaks – the Lilywhites have just had their first clear week for three months.

Pochettino last had a solid period with his players on the training ground between their games against Crystal Palace and Liverpool back in August – and the Argentinian has made full use of the time as Tottenham prepare to host Swansea on Saturday, having won just one of their last 10 games in all competitions.

“It was a good moment because we’ve had time to be calm and to analyse all that has happened in the last month and focus on the last few games, because when you are playing and travelling it’s difficult to be calm and stop the ball because you always need to be focused on the next game, the next game, the next game,” said the manager.

“It’s been a good opportunity to see the bigger picture and try to analyse everything. We have had a lot of individual meetings, collective meetings, showing tactical decisions, behaviour, attitude - different things to try to give them the better tools to improve and to realise things, because always it’s about improving.

“I think it’s been a very good week. We needed a week like this - a clear week to refresh the concept and to realise where we are going.

“Have I seen anything that’s worried me in the last couple of months? No. We’ve analysed every game and you will see that always we were in the game. We lost or we drew or we won from a minimum score difference and we were in the game. Sometimes we played better, sometimes less better, but it’s the small details.

“When we talk we talk about mentality, to compete, to be ready to compete. I think that is a massive step that we need to take to move forward in trying to improve, and I think we were focused this week on how important that is.

“It’s not about skills or technical ability, it was about being more fresh and clever to compete, and that is the gap that we need to reduce maybe with the teams that have the ability to compete every three days.

“That was important, to explain and try to show them why I told you or why that is my opinion, and that was good, to try to show that in that situation we need to compete better and what we need to do to try to improve that.”

Follow me on Twitter @BenPearceSpurs