Eric Dier believes Mauricio Pochettino’s philosophy is “set in stone” after the Argentine’s first season in charge, and that Spurs will be ready to challenge for the top four next season.

Pochettino has been keen to underline the fact that this has been a transitional season, and that the priority was to get the squad playing his way, and Dier is confident that box has been ticked now.

“This was the first year with a new manager so everyone’s learning his ideas, and I think that’s all set in stone now, so we can kick on straight from pre-season,” said the 21-year-old. “Everyone knows where they’re at, everyone knows what the manager wants. We’ll go into it very positively and try our best.

“We’re happy that we managed to get fifth on the last day of the season, that was the aim at the weekend. But we’ve got to be ambitious and try to get into that top four, so it’s disappointing but we’re obviously happy to get fifth on the last day of the season.”

Pochettino said: “It takes time to develop your philosophy. You need to understand, when we arrived here it was after the World Cup in Brazil.

“Some players arrived a week before the start of the season and it was very difficult for the pre-season. Then we started in the Europa League and so developing your philosophy is never easy, but I think the main group now understand us and share our philosophy and management. For the future this is very important.”

Dier set up Kane’s decisive goal in Sunday’s 1-0 win at Everton, sending in an arcing cross from the right which was met by a glancing diving header as Spurs’ prolific striker netted his 31st goal of the season for his club.

“I know if I put it in he’ll be there,” said Dier. “That’s my job and I’m happy I did it. It was quite an old-school goal, from two young players. It was a good goal.

“What Harry has done is unbelievable, I don’t think anyone expected it at the beginning and he’s surprised everyone, and credit to him. He works really hard, I think you can see that on the pitch. He’s done unbelievably well.

“Considering he wasn’t even starting [in the league] at the beginning of the season, it makes it even more special, so everyone’s really happy for him.

“We wanted to finish the season well and we’ve got two clean sheets and two wins to finish it off, and that’s great as we go to Australia.”

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