Hugo: It’s no more Mr Nice Guy on pitch now

HUGO LLORIS reckons he and his Spurs team-mates are well on the way to becoming the ‘c****’ boss Jose Mourinho wants them to be.

A recurring theme of Amazon Prime’s All Or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur documentary is Mourinho’s insistence that his side are too nice.

He has been hammering the message home for some time now and, as his men prepare to take on Everton in their season-opener today, Lloris is adamant it is definitely getting through.

The Spurs captain, the last man to lift the World Cup, said: “You know, it doesn’t mean off the field you are not a good guy.

“You can be a good guy off the field, but when you are on the field you have to do everything.

“And everything means also to have this personality to be naughty, to get the winning taste.

“This has to be the way to go.

Tough

“You know, when I look at the games after the restart there were some good signals. I could see some improvements, especially in the way our manager wants us to play.

“Last season was a tough season for everyone and maybe especially for the manager because he arrived in the middle of the season in a bad period, especially for confidence.

“So now it’s a new season with four weeks of work together, more or less, and it’s very important to have a good start to see the progress in our games, performances and results.”

Does that mean Tottenham will lay down a marker of their new, nastier persona against

Everton today?

Lloris added: “Yes, but it’s not enough on its own. You need to plan, you need talent, team spirit, you need a lot of things to become a winning team.

“At some points and at some moments in some games, it’s true, you have to know how to win in the ugly way.

“You don’t need to play a fantastic game to win.

“And that kind of game that you win, it makes you even stronger – because you know that, on a bad day, you know how to win.”

Tottenham and Mourinho (left) will, no doubt, find ways to win ugly in what promises to be a hectic first month of the season.

Arsenal’s FA Cup triumph meant Spurs dropped into the Europa League qualifying rounds, which imvolves playing four games in the next 10 days – two in the top flight, one in Europe and another in the EFL Cup.

Lloris (below) said: “We just have to adapt to the schedule.

“I can’t hide from saying that playing a Premier League game, a League Cup game and a Europa League game in a short time – less than 48 hours between the Premier League game and EFL Cup game – I mean, it’s not easy.

“And if we go through, it’s going to be the same again the week after.

“But we have a squad and the manager will make the decision.

“As a player, you don’t have that much to think about – just to make sure that you are ready for the next game.

“And it’s a matter of doing your best, always with the winning mentality – something we have to

follow.”