March marred

We've reached the end of March, and we are still in 2nd place, and in the Premier League title hunt, chasing Leicester City, who remain five points ahead of us.

After the excitement and achievements of February, for which Mauricio Pochettino won his second manager of the month award of this season, we faced difficult London Derby matches against West Ham and Arsenal, and the challenge of a Europa League Round of 16 tie against one of Europe's top current form sides - Borussia Dortmund.

The fact is we didn't come out of those matches anywhere near as well as we hoped, failing to close the gap with Leicester, who got 10 points from their four games played this month. Three of those were 1-0 wins.

West Ham, who maintain their own challenge for a top four place, scored in the seventh minute, and not only held onto that lead, but in truth threatened to extend the margin, particularly in the first half. That was not as bad a night as it could have been for Spurs, as both Arsenal and Man City lost in this round of games.

Arsenal came to White Hart Lane on a run of poor form, and with key injury absences, but, of course, they still pulled out a performance against us, despite also having Coquelin sent off early in the second half for a second bookable offence. Harry Kane had given us a 2-1 lead with a wondrous curling shot to the far post in the 62nd minute, but Sanchez levelled the scores for our nemesis.

Enough has been said about our defeat to an excellent Dortmund side, but as you know, I do think we surrendered the tie with that weak team selection in Germany.

Comfortable wins against bottom side Aston Villa, and an open Bournemouth team keep us in that title hunt, but with the games running out, we have to not only do our bit, but also hope for Claudio Ranieri's side to slip up.

No less than five of our team were selected by Roy Hodgson for England's friendly matches against Germany and The Netherlands (Walker, Rose, Dier, Alli and Kane) and four of them started last night in Germany. (Update Sun Mar 27th - All our contingent had a great game! Harry Kane performed a Cruyff turn and scored a great goal. Eric Dier scored the late winner in a dramatic 3-2 win for England. Dele Alli won plaudits from all observers, including Germany's former star Lothar Matthaus. Danny Rose also won deserved praise for some great tackles in defence, but also for his contributions to the attack. It was a great night for Spurs and for England, as the team came back from 2-0 down to win!)

With all our key players involved in Internationals we have to cross our fingers more than ever that they will all come back in one piece. Vertonghen and Clinton N'Jie are approaching fitness again, but Nabil Bentaleb will struggle to feature for us again this season.

Next month brings four more games, all with their own challenges, starting with Liverpool at Anfield next Saturday tea-time. Let's hope we are still in that race in May!

Toby Alderweireld was the Spurs Odyssey player of the month for the second consecutive month, and I can tell you he is now forging ahead of Hugo Lloris in the race to be our player of the season. There is a great YouTube clip here showing Alderweireld's pace and defensive skills in our home game against Borussia Dortmund, when he came to the rescue of the usually reliable Kevin Wimmer, taking the ball off the feet of Aubameyang, and playing his way with skill out of danger.

Wimmer has hardly let us down in the 14 consecutive games he has been required to play since Jan Vertonghen was injured at Selhurst Park in January, and it is interesting to note that his consistency and effectiveness partnering Alderweireld have drawn him level with Vertonghen in the cumulative player ratings.

Those player ratings reveal several other excellent player performances this season, with Dembele, Alli and Dier just above Wimmer and Vertonghen who are all chasing Hugo Lloris and Toby Alderweireld.

Harry Kane has scored 5 goals this month, and my Premier League review for Match 31 has more detail on Harry's scoring achievements so far. Harry currently tops the Premier League goal-scoring chart, and has now scored 21 league goals for us in two successive seasons.

· Review the 2015-16 Premier League season here

Don't forget to check out the players' current figures re. appearances, cards, goals scored and accumulated ratings to date at the bottom of this page.

...if you want to read reports of the matches played during this season, then links are on the Spurs Odyssey Fixtures/Reports page here. By working your way back through the previous month's figures, you can review the performances over more than 15 years!