Improvement seen in October

It may come as some surprise, bearing in mind we lost two more games this month, and we are still looking for a first Champions League win this season, but improvement has been noted in all areas of the team's performance, and that of the manager. Mauricio Pochettino is graded by Spurs Odyssey voters after every game in three categories - team selection, tactics and substitutions. The fact that Erik Lamela, who has made as many appearances so far this season off the bench, as he has from the start of games has had a positive effect. Erik is recognised as having a great season so far, and having a great impact with 5 goals in all games, and several assists too!

We lost the first three games played in September, and two of those were great disappointments (at Watford and in the San Siro v Inter). To lose any game is a disappointment, of course, but nobody truly fancied our chances against the two teams who beat us this month - Barcelona and Manchester City, both of whom will be regarded as favourites for not only their respective domestic leagues, but for the Champions League too.

We even dropped from fourth to fifth this month, and have been overtaken by Arsenal, so why the improvement? Two wins over West Ham have helped with Lamela scoring our solitary goal in the Premier League game. Erik was one of those rested for the League Cup game which we won very well, with Son Heung-min scoring twice and rare starter Fernando Llorente scoring the other.

We've also got a plus goal difference this month. Harry Kane scored against Barcelona and PSV, and has 5 Premier League goals to his name (plus those two Champions League goals), but we are all still waiting to see him find his best form. Even Brighton's veteran Glenn Murray is one of the five players ahead of Harry at this early stage of the Golden Boot stakes.

Erik Lamela also scored against Barcelona, and got the assist for Kane's goal. He has won our player of the month award for his contributions and consistency, although Juan Foyth's man of the match vote in the League Cup win at Stratford, and goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga's contribution in the same game were also of note. Gazzaniga has made four starts already this season, scoring highly in the Spurs Odyssey polls every time. 18 year old Oliver Skipp, who had a good pre-season with the Spurs team in America made his first team debut off the bench in the Carabao Cup win at Stratford.

We have a slightly less hectic November with five and not six games, but the first week will be busy with Wolves and Palace away interspersed with the important return game against PSV. That game will be at Wembley of course, where we learnt we will keep playing until the end of the year at least. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club are not getting high grades from many fans for their new stadium delay!

Mauricio Pochettino has now used 27 players in our 15 games so far (including three who have only made one appearance as substitute). Harry Kane and Lucas Moura top the appearances chart to date. There have been a couple of marked deteriorations in individual performance levels this month, notably those of Hugo Lloris and Kieran Trippier, whose defensive errors (rashness against PSV in Hugo's case) have cost us. On the other hand Harry Winks is regaining fitness, form and confidence, and Moussa Sissoko - who was our man of the match against Man City - have made significant improvement this month.

Both Lamela and Foyth have been selected for the Argentina squad for their November matches, and as a club we still have the last International break of the year to contend with. We also know that we have to wait until at least December before we see Jan Vertonghen again.

· Review the 2018-19 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 the last 18 years!