Ange Postecoglou paid tribute to late Tottenham coach Ugo Ehiogu on what would have been his 52nd birthday after his side's 4-1 win over Aston Villa on Sunday.
Ehiogu died after suffering a cardiac arrest at Spurs' Enfield training base in April 2017.
The former Villa and England defender joined the London club as a youth coach in 2014, and worked in the academy alongside Matt Wells, who is now Postecoglou's assistant manager.
Towards the end of his post-match press conference, Postecoglou raised Ehiogu unprompted and revealed Wells had addressed the squad about his late colleague during the week.
"I'm really proud of the lads," Postecoglou said. "It was an important day for us today.
"Because it's also the birthday of the late Ugo Ehiogu and he had a big influence on Matty Wells here at the club, I know he played for Villa but he was obviously a coach at our football club.
"Matty spoke really strongly about him. When you hear things like that, and how people affect your life, it helps give clarity to the players about what we're trying to do here.
"Obviously for his wife and his son probably a tough day, but hopefully they get a little bit cheer from the fact Wellsy made it a really important point, that he may be gone but he's not forgotten.
"He just spoke about it during the week. We mentioned him today because it was his birthday today. Like I said, you don't dismiss those kind of things, because he was with our football club when he sadly passed away. So it's important that the memory lives on."
Trailing at half-time to Morgan Rogers' goal from a corner, Spurs scored four times in an exhilarating second-half display to see off Villa and move to within two points of fourth-placed rivals Arsenal.
Brennan Johnson levelled the game with a back-post tap-in from Heung-min Son's cross and James Maddison scored the fourth with a brilliant curling free-kick in stoppage-time.
In between, Dominic Solanke netted twice, a lovely dink over goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez and a close-range finish from substitute Richarlison's cross.
Postecoglou believes the summer signing from Bournemouth has made Spurs a better team.
"The enormous effort he put in on Wednesday night to help us win a game of football, not just physically but mentally and his capacity to help the team in every way he can," Postecoglou said of summer signing Solanke.
"To back that up today with such a massive effort again against a pretty difficult team to play against in that sense, it's just unbelievable. Yeah, the goals are great and of course as a striker I am sure he loves the fact he can score a couple of goals, but even if he didn't, again I can't speak highly enough of what he is contributing to our team at the moment. And long may it continue because with him playing that way, it just makes us a better team."
