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Mauricio Pochettino must keep Spurs' stars invested in his long-term project

With the first team off in Asia on a "meet the fans" trip and to play a couple of friendlies, Spurs are getting a deserved break from their season's exertions. To finish the Premier League with two thumping away wins was the icing on the cake: proof that the team had learned from the season before and had developed a ruthless edge in the closing games even when there was little at stake.

But now the hard work starts all over again. It's inevitable that some players will leave over the course of the summer. It happens at every club and Spurs will be no exceptions, not least because many players in the squad are likely to be prime targets for other clubs with deep pockets.

The trick for manager Mauricio Pochettino will be to make sure he hangs on to the players he believes are critical to his plans. Only he really knows the value of each player to Tottenham. The squad has been put together to play to his instructions, and Pochettino will be only too aware of its strengths and limitations. If Kyle Walker and Eric Dier are on the way out as has been strongly rumoured in recent weeks, they must only go because the manager has replacements lined up to fill the gaps.

Nor will Pochettino be under any illusions that his squad does not need strengthening, if not always where expected. This time last year, there was a universal acknowledgement that Spurs needed a second striker to cover if Harry Kane got injured. Tottenham bought Vincent Janssen but got by well enough without him. On the occasions Janssen did play, he lacked sharpness, but Dele Alli, Heung-Min Son and Christian Eriksen were able to supply the goals the Dutchman couldn't.

So Spurs are unlikely to make a striker their first priority, but Pochettino will be looking to bolster the defensive midfield. When Victor Wanyama and Mousa Dembele were both injured at the same time, Spurs looked uncharacteristically vulnerable and struggled to link up play between defence and attack. Pochettino might also rethink his second-string attacking midfielders. Moussa Sissoko and Georges-Kevin N'Koudou haven't made the expected impact, and there must be question marks about the long-term fitness of Erik Lamela. Spurs cannot afford a £30 million player who spends more time in rehab than on the pitch.

But it's not just the personnel that will be occupying Pochettino's mind. It is also the move to Wembley and how to quantify what would constitute a successful season next year. In his three seasons at Tottenham, Pochettino has finished fifth, third and second. The progression has been easy on the eye for every Spurs fan but will be hard to continue away from White Hart Lane.

Pochettino has talked about taking Spurs to another level, one on which the club starts to win trophies. That will be easier said than done. Winning the league title at Wembley, a pitch on which the players struggled in their Champions League games last season and that may well boost opponents, is almost certain to be beyond reach. Most clubs, naturally enough, tend to be unsettled by switching grounds, and for Spurs to replicate their White Hart Lane home form at Wembley would be virtually unprecedented.

Given that winning the Champions League is also unlikely, Pochettino realistically will have to target the League and FA Cups if he wants to lift a trophy. He's never shown a great deal of interest in the League Cup, whose fixture schedule clashes with the qualifying rounds of the European tournaments, so that leaves the FA Cup.

Spurs were arguably unlucky not to beat Chelsea in the semifinal of this year's competition, having played the better football for much of the 90 minutes, but the final score told its own story. Chelsea had the players to take their chances and Spurs didn't. It's been 26 years since Tottenham last lifted the FA Cup and not many would bet on them winning it in a season of transition.

So that leaves Pochettino with the tricky task of managing expectation both for the fans and the players. The fans should be the easier of the two to manage. Much as they want their club to win trophies, most fans are happy with the direction of travel. Manchester United may have won two cups this season, but few Spurs fans I know would have swapped Tottenham's season for United's. Tottenham look like a team that is going somewhere, while United have often been barely above average.

It's the players that Pochettino needs to get on side. Somehow he has to get across to them that he shares their desire to win tournaments without burdening them with unrealistic expectations for what is likely to be a tricky transitional season. Bizarrely, if he can manage that, then Spurs might just even win something next year. As always, we live in hope.