Every word Igor Tudor said on what Romero told him and why he hasn’t enjoyed early Tottenham days

You have a great reputation for coming into clubs and making an immediate impact. What is it that you do?

I don’t know. I do my job. Nothing special. I do the things I believe is important. Nothing more, nothing less. Each coach has his own style to achieve the results. I have my style which I believe is the best. It’s never the same because there are always different characteristics, different clubs and different culture. Not even of the league but the club. Some clubs like this kind of football, some like this. You need to resolve the problems. Everywhere the problems, if you go to the best clubs in the world you believe there are not problems there but there are problems there like in the third division. It’s all about how you resolve the problems in a very quick time. Not easy but it’s okay.

When you talk about making these football players a team with a mentality, have you spoken to the team about what you expect from them on Sunday because they really struggled at home in the Premier League?

Yeah, we speak from day one. We have these three, four sessions. From day one, I go immediately to very concrete things, because there’s no time to lose. Even choosing the exercise, I need to choose the exercise for in a short period, they can do the improvement.

Not losing too much time on basic principles, maybe sometimes I do. So, what I said, it’s not, of course, possible in short trainings to do big changes, but something we need to see. And I’m sure that we will see something. I saw the players very available, very motivated to turn on the things. So, that’s a nice start.

Given that you’ve got so many players out injured, has it been particularly easy or difficult to work out how you want to set the team up? And also, what kind of style of play do you want to try and implement?

I would say that it’s more difficult when you don’t have players, of course. But in one way, then it’s easy to choose. The system is always after the style, after the mentality. The system can be…as you know, during the game, the players move, change. So, it’s only start position after it’s all about fluidity, about movement. Without the ball, of course. Then you need to choose for the characteristics of the players you have That’s the thing. With the players, if you have wingers, fantastic wingers, you can play with the wingers. If you have, I don’t know, fantastic strikers, you can play with strikers or midfielders. So, that’s the key. But it’s not about the system. That’s the last thing that’s important.

For this start, you know, what I said before, we need to become a team, we need to become the group of the people who are available, who will give something more, who will not watch each other. Who will not watch themselves, but each other, to help them. So, this is, for me, basic, and after, all the quality can come out, because this is a team that is full of quality, I believe, full of talented players, with good motor engines, I like to say, the legs who can run, you know. So, there is plenty of potential. So, to come out of this potential, some basic needs to be done.

You mentioned you’ve had 13 players in training. Have you got anyone coming back from injury before this game on Sunday?

Probably no, probably no. Solanke, Dominic, had some problems with his throat, but he made today some training. So, all others, probably someone next week.

This club has a great history of having had really top-level, world-class Croatian players who’ve played here, so how proud are you to continue that link between Croatian players, managers and this club?

Yeah, my best friend was here, Stipe Pletikosa as goalkeeper, and also the best player in the history of Croatian football, Luka Modric. So, of course, nice things happened 10, 15 years ago, so it’s passed a little bit of time, but it’s nice.

Radu Dragusin is going to be an important player for you in the weeks ahead, with Cristian Romero out. Did you work with him in his first season coming through?

Yeah, he came out as a young player in that period. I’ve been there, recognising him immediately, the skills, he was good already. When he was young, he’s still young, but not like he was four or five years ago.

Did you work with Romero maybe just for a week or two?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I sent him out, I sent him to Atalanta. No, no, he told me that now ‘you sent me out!’ I said, no, no, no. He went to Atalanta, and then he made this fantastic career, and that’s what he became.

What was your first conversation like with the leaders in the group, like Cristian?

The conversation was what I said now before here. It is about everything, you cannot say we speak about this and we don’t speak about this. You need to speak about these values, but also about concrete things on the pitch and what you want because the players need and they want to have clarity about what we want. This was a goal to send two messages about people, about men, about values and about what we want to play, so these two things together working.

Who will be your captain with Cristian out?

Yeah, he (Romero) will be. Ah, you will see on Sunday.

Do you think Spurs are in a relegation fight?