James sustained a hamstring injury in training this week and is starting a rehabilitation process which will rule him out for a few weeks. It follows regular muscular issues in recent seasons, and Pochettino has explained the process for finding a long-term solution has begun.

‘We are trying to find all the information and trying to create a strategy to provide him with the best things to become strong, recover well, and to try to avoid and anticipate these problems before they happen,’ said Pochettino.

‘The club is working really hard to create a structure, with us involved. You can create a medical area, performance area, but when you talk about high performance, the coach is the first person responsible.

‘We expect the players to perform in the best way and be fully fit, and that means we have to work together to develop the best strategy for different problems.

‘Reece is our captain. It’s only one week, we are so disappointed, we feel bad, but at the same time we need to move on,’ added the head coach.

‘He also understands we need to find a solution. You need to have different plans if something happens. That is football and we need to adapt.

‘We need to find another way. We are not going to have the same profile of player, a different profile of player to try to perform well and help us win games.’

Pochettino had better news on the availability of Noni Madueke. The exciting winger, a Euro Under-21 champion with England this summer, picked up an injury on our US tour and did not feature in pre-season.

He was an unused sub against Liverpool but could play some part at the London Stadium this weekend.

‘He is much better,’ confirmed Pochettino.

‘He was involved in the Liverpool game, but we wanted to avoid because it was too early to take a risk with him, but now he was training really well during the week.

‘He is going to be involved against West Ham and maybe with the possibility to play.’