I'm a Tottenham player and am determined to go back into pre-season as fit as possible with the aim of impressing the gaffer to try and establish myself in the team.
The main aim of pre-season is to get ready for the competitive games and go into those in the best possible fashion on group and individual levels.
For every player, it is important to be fit and have a good pre-season behind him.
I had a good first season at Tottenham, but in the second there wasn't a sequence of games. So when I didn't feel happy, I waited for the season to end and then asked the president to let me go to try another challenge.
If my career was a basketball season, I'm in the pre-season still. I'm not blowing everybody out by 40 - there's so much work to be done, and there's no time to really sit and look back and be proud of what I've done yet, because it's the pre-season still.
When you're seventeen or eighteen, you bomb on in pre-season immediately, try to impress. But then at the end of pre-season because you were so fast at the beginning, your times aren't getting any better and it looks like you actually aren't getting fitter.
I am who I am, and I try to influence the team in my own way, especially with my performances on the pitch. If possible, I try to help the team in the dressing room as well by offering encouragement where needed.
I think every season in pre-season you go into it and everyone is saying, 'they'll be strong next season,' but you never know.
I see myself as being a long-term England player - I am 100 percent focused here to try and get into that team.
It was Tottenham at home. I thought: 'Please don't go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham are about. They are nice and tidy but we'll f****** do them.' Alex came in and said: 'Lads, it's only Tottenham.' And that was it! Brilliant!
You have an atmosphere at Tottenham like, 'Okay, we are not scared of anyone,' and we have the same feeling with the national team. Everywhere we go at Tottenham, we have a good feeling.
I don't like it when a player says, 'I like freedom; I want to play for myself.' Because the player has to understand he is part of a team with 10 other players. If everyone wants to be a jazz musician, it will be chaos. They will not be a team, and nothing will be possible.
Pre-season is a lot of hard work and no player really enjoys it, but you look forward to the start of the season when the competitive games start.
I feel like I don't really care about impressing other people. I thoroughly enjoy impressing myself.
I always said to myself that when I stopped playing I would go back and coach at Tottenham.
I would never let myself go back there to play another 82-game season in Seattle. I think the team deserves better and the fans deserve better.
I didn't really think about going to another club; I wanted to be a Tottenham player and play at Tottenham.