LONDON -- Mauricio Pochettino says Tottenham's first full week off since August has helped him and the players "see the bigger picture" as they look to address a miserable run of form in Saturday's Premier League match against Swansea.
The Spurs manager has not had an undisrupted week with his squad since before the 1-1 draw at Liverpool on Aug. 27 and he has previously lamented that there is only time to "rest and play."
Swansea's visit comes seven days after Spurs lost 2-1 at Chelsea, and Pochettino has used the time for one-on-one and group meetings with his players in a bid to address a run of one win in ten matches.
"It was a good moment because we've had time to be calm and to analyse all that has happened in the last month and focus on the last few games," Pochettino told a news conference on Thursday.
"When you are playing and travelling, it's difficult to be calm because you always need to be focused on the next game, the next game, the next game. It's been a good opportunity to see the bigger picture and try to analyse everything.
"[There were] a lot of individual meetings and collective meetings, showing tactical decisions, behaviour, attitude -- different things to try to give them the better tools to improve, because always it's about improving.
"I think it's been a very good week, we needed a week like this, a clear week to refresh the concept and to realise where we are going."
At the beginning of this season, Pochettino said the only hurdle his players had to overcome to improve on their third-place finish was "in their heads" and he revealed that he had spoken again this week about improving their mental fortitude.
"We talked about mentality, to compete, to be ready to compete, I think that is a massive step that we need to move forward in trying to improve and I think we were focused this week on how important that is," said the Argentine.
"It's not about skills or technical ability, it was about being more fresh to compete, clever and that is the gap that we need to reduce maybe with the teams that have the ability to compete every three days. That was important to explain."
Since beating Manchester City 2-0 on Oct. 2, Spurs have won one, drawn five and lost four matches in all competitions, scoring just four times from open play.
However, they are yet to lose by more than one goal this season and Pochettino said he had seen nothing in their bad run to worry him, adding that football is a game of fine margins.
"We've analysed every game and you will see that always we were in the game and we lost or we draw or we win from a minimum score difference. Sometimes we played better, sometimes not better -- but it's the small details."
