Eric Dier says Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg 'has the attributes' Tottenham need ahead of Nations League battle

Dier already impressed with Hojbjerg's leadership qualities.
Getty Images
Dan Kilpatrick @Dan_KP7 September 2020

Eric Dier says Tottenham have been missing a player like Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg as he prepares to face the "combative" midfielder in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

Hojbjerg joined Spurs from Southampton last month and will be up against his new teammates Dier and Harry Kane when England face Denmark in the Nations League qualifier. "After seeing him more closely since he arrived at Tottenham, he's a great player," Dier said of Hojbjerg.

"He's going to bring a lot to the Tottenham team. He has attributes that we've been missing. He's very professional, he has a fantastic attitude and work rate and I think he brings leadership qualities as well. He speaks a lot on the pitch, he pushes his teammates and he demands things from his teammates.

"In the way that he plays, he's quite combative and aggressive and brings more fight to the midfield, which is good for us."

Dier is expected to keep his place at centre-half for England in Denmark, where he will also be reunited with former Spurs teammate Christian Eriksen, who has struggled to make an impact at Inter Milan since leaving Spurs in a €20million deal last January.

"I speak to him quite often," Dier said of Eriksen in an interview with Danish TV. "From what he's told me, he's really happy in Italy and settled really well. Looking from the outside and it's difficult to move team and country, especially in the circumstances around the virus. He's a fantastic player with so much quality but it's normal sometimes you go through a period of transition at a different team, especially in a different country."

In Pictures | Tottenham's yellow third kit for 2020-21 season

1/10

Saturday's win over Iceland was Dier's first England appearance since last year's Nations League third-place playoff and he says the aim is to go one better this season.

"It would be a great milestone for us," he said. "That's our ambition – to try to win with the national team. Getting to the semi-final of the World Cup and Nations League, we want to try to get one step further, get to finals and start winning competitions. The Nations League would be a great start to that, it's obviously going to be very difficult with Iceland, Denmark and Belgium [in our group]."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in