LONDON -- Mauricio Pochettino hopes Tottenham Hotspur's relaxed festive schedule will give him the chance to introduce "new concepts" to his summer signings and spark a successful second half of the season.
Spurs host Brighton on Wednesday before taking on runaway league leaders Manchester City on Saturday.
They then have a week off to prepare for a trip to fourth-placed Burnley on Dec. 23, with another week-long break after Southampton visit Wembley on Boxing Day.
Spurs had been due to play West Ham on New Year's Eve but the game has been rescheduled for Jan. 4, meaning they face three fixtures in five days at the start of next year.
Last week, Pochettino blamed his side's patchy form on late summer transfer business, and said he hoped to use the festive breaks to further assimilate Davinson Sanchez, Serge Aurier, Juan Foyth and Fernando Llorente.
"For the new players that arrived, [it's important] to be more comfortable here, to know everything, to adapt their quality to the team," he told a news conference.
"The first six months is always difficult for the new players because we don't have much time to work -- sometimes we work only through the video because we can't do anything on the pitch. And it's not the same.
"Just today [Tuesday] we were talking about next week -- it will be key for us to work with the new players, introduce different concepts that we need to improve on the team."
In the summer, Pochettino said the best way for his squad to improve was for key players such as Dele Alli, Harry Kane and Christian Eriksen to start to "feel competition."
He said the squad had lacked competitiveness but hoped the returns of Erik Lamela and Victor Wanyama would spark another winning winter run after they won seven straight games from Dec. 14 last year.
"It's true that for different reasons, like injuries, we've missed this feeling [of competition],"he said.
"Of course, in the second part of the season, if we can recover everyone -- now Lamela is nearly 100 percent, or Victor Wanyama -- it's very good news for the team to have everyone at a very good level.
"The second half of the season, with all the squad fit and all together, we will be more competitive. We are going to have Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League, and we need to be competitive and strong."
Meanwhile, Tottenham's executive director Donna-Maria Cullen has told FC Business magazine that the club's new stadium project remains on schedule.
Spurs are due to open their 61,500-capacity ground for the start of next season but the timescale is tight and they have an agreement with the Football Association to spend an extra season at Wembley if necessary.
"At the moment it is on track to open on time," Cullen said. "There is nothing to tell us otherwise, though I don't have a crystal ball."
Spurs have yet to announce a naming rights partner for the new stadium, but Cullen added: "If you look at most schemes, naming rights deals tend to come when the stadium is at an advanced stage of construction."