Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino accepted on Monday his job will come under scrutiny if he fails to rally the flagging fortunes of last season’s Champions League finalists.

Spurs have endured a terrible start to the season, winning just three of their first 12 games in all competitions, which has seen Pochettino face prolonged criticism for the first time in five-and-a-half years at the club.

“I am not surprised. That is football,” said Pochettino. “Football is always about to win today and tomorrow, what happened yesterday is gone.

“I understand it’s the business. I am 47 - look, why do you think that I don’t have white hair?

“Because I don’t pay attention to any of this. I only pay attention to what we need to do to improve our performance.”

Pochettino said after Saturday’s 1-1 draw against bottom-of-the-table Watford that his side was slowly regaining their confidence after a 7-2 thrashing at the hands of Bayern Munich in the Champions League three weeks ago.

Tottenham can begin to put that result right when they host Red Star Belgrade on Tuesday with the chance to move back into pole position for a place in the last 16.

“It’s important to win tomorrow to be in a good position in the table.” added Pochettino. “In this type of period, our worst opponent are ourselves and we need to compete with ourselves to build our confidence.”

Despite taking just one point from their first two games in Group B, Tottenham are better placed than they were at the same stage in the Champions League last season before going all the way to the final for the first time in the club’s history.

“We know it takes a lot of experience, a lot of energy to get through a Champions League group. If we can win tomorrow night we will be in a better position than last year and obviously we ended up going to the final,” said Harry Kane.

“We have to believe in every game we play, fight for each other and then who knows what’s possible.”

Kane’s form has not faltered as much as some of his team-mates with the England captain scoring seven times in 11 appearance for Spurs this season.

However, he admitted the past few weeks are the toughest period he has gone through since breaking into the first-team five years ago.

“The standards we have set over the past four or five years have been very high. Now when things aren’t going so well people are going to wonder why,” added Kane.

“This season little things aren’t going our way, we’ve got to try and find away to overcome that.”