Mourinho backs Spurs for top-four Premier League finish
Spurs’ chances of a fourth successive finish in the Champions League qualification places looked a lost cause when the Portuguese took charge last month with the club 12 points behind Chelsea.
That gap has been cut to six following three wins from four under Mourinho, with a game against Frank Lampard’s side to come next week.
They will hope to make further inroads against Wolves on Sunday in a bid to get back to where Mourinho says they belong.
“We know where we belong, Mourinho said at his pre-match press conference on Friday. “We don’t belong to the second part of the table where we were, we don’t even belong to position seven or eight where we are in this moment.
“We know where we belong and we believe at the end of the season we are going to be there.”
Mourinho said he needed time but the squad had the “talent and desire” to improve.
The 56-year-old has had a hectic start to life at Spurs, with six games in 21 days, and he has been unable to put the hours in with this squad to fully implement his ideas.
The fixture schedule eases slightly in January and the Portuguese intends to be on the training ground rather than trying to sign new players.
“I want to work,” he said. “I’m going to have time to work, which until now I don’t have.
“I complain every day with my staff, the frustration of I want to do a certain kind of training. I just can’t do it. It’s frustrating. I love pre-season to work. I don’t have.”
Mourinho got a first real look at some of his fringe players in the Champions League defeat by Bayern Munich on Wednesday as Ryan Sessegnon, Kyle Walker-Peters, Giovani Lo Celso and Juan Foyth all started for the first time under him.
Sessegnon scored and did well while Mourinho singled Foyth out for praise but neither of those players will be in the starting line-up at Molineux.