Tottenham defender Eric Dier believes he is in the form of his career but is determined to improve further under Antonio Conte.
Dier has been in impressive form for Spurs playing in the centre of a three-man defence but missed out on Gareth Southgate’s England squad for the forthcoming international break.
Conte said on Friday he expects Dier to go to the World Cup this year and reckons there is even more to come from the 28-year-old.
Dier is keen to take those words on board.
“I feel for me this is consistently my best season I have had so far at Tottenham overall,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever shown the consistency in the performances that I have shown this season and I feel like my football is the best it has been in my opinion.
“It is always very nice when a manager, especially one like him, says those things. It gives me a lot of confidence, but the thing I pay most attention to from his words is that I have a lot of space for improvement and I think that is really the thing he says that I focus on the most.
“I want to fill that space, fill that potential, as much as possible, as much as he thinks possible.”
Dier’s form is helping Spurs launch a bid for the top four and they produced a big result by beating West Ham 3-1 on Sunday.
Spurs had alternated between wins and losses in each of their last seven games but were able to post back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time in 2022.
Dier feels there has been a clear progression in performances.
“I can’t hide that the run has been weighing on my mind, it has been weighing on all of our minds, and to end that now before the international break is really important for us,” he said.
“I think despite the results you can see that we have really improved a lot in the last couple of months, even if you look at the Man Utd game and the Burnley game, they weren’t the results we wanted but I think they were different performances to what you have seen before.
“And you can see today that our progression is really clear for everyone to see.”
West Ham’s own top-four hopes suffered a likely terminal blow as they trail fourth-placed Arsenal by six points having played two games more.
Said Benrahma gave the Hammers hope, but their lack of quality in attack proved the difference between the two sides, with Michail Antonio missing two key chances.
David Moyes said: “I do not know if he is struggling with confidence. Mich is a good guy and he does not come over that way (as a confidence player) but if you are a number nine at any football club you want to score goals and that will fill your confidence.
“He had two good opportunities and somebody told me Spurs had four shot on target and we had one and Tottenham scored three and we scored one.
“I do not think it was just Tottenham’s front two, they have a team of good players, not just the front two. But if you ask me the difference it was we had two very good midfield players and Spurs have very good midfield players and we played our wing-backs against their wing-backs.
“Was there much difference in all areas of the field? For me there was not much difference. I could say their defending compared to ours but I think that came from their forward players, the quality of their forward players was so good.”
