Harry Kane believes Tottenham are finally demonstrating the mental toughness manager Mauricio Pochettino has been demanding this season.

Pochettino questioned the resilience of his players after a recent home defeat against Newcastle, but since then Tottenham have progressed into the League Cup quarter-finals, staged a late recovery to win at Aston Villa, and on Thursday beat Asteras Tripolis in the Europa League.

Now Pochettino's team will attempt to record a fourth successive victory when Stoke visit White Hart Lane on Sunday.

Yet while results have improved, Pochettino's team were below their best in the nervy 2-1 victory over Asteras when they almost allowed a two-goal lead to slip.

In the end the north Londoners were grateful for Kane's 10th goal of the season that gave them a much-needed cushion and reinforced the young striker's growing reputation.

Kane will hope his efforts earn him a first Premier League start of the season against Stoke and the forward believes there are plenty of other positives to be drawn from Spurs' recent upturn.

"I think we've got what it takes. There is steel in this team. We had a great comeback against Aston Villa in the last game and we dug deep to get the result here," Kane said.

"You can develop a steely streak from getting results like this, because they build confidence. We all stuck together against Asteras and we can only build from that.

"When we go into our games, every player knows that everyone else has got his back covered and that we're going to fight through."

Tottenham head into the latest round of matches in eighth place in the Premier League and injuries could hamper their hopes of extending their recent winning run.

Aaron Lennon and Emmanuel Adebayor will face late fitness tests after missing the trip to Greece with hamstring strains and Nabil Bentaleb is sidelined with an ankle problem.

Stoke travel to the capital still upset by their treatment from referees, with manager Mark Hughes set to speak with the head of Professional Game Match Officials Limited Mike Riley next week.

The Welshman is far from happy after a series of decisions went against his side, including an unpunished two-footed challenge by Alex Song on Mame Diouf during last weekend's 2-2 draw with West Ham, who trailed 2-0 at the time.

Hughes is also less than pleased that captain Ryan Shawcross has been highlighted for alleged grappling offences at set pieces after he gave away a penalty against Swansea, while chairman Peter Coates could face FA sanction for accusing referees of bias against his side.

"There's meetings planned for next week," said Hughes. "we felt we had observations that we made as a club and individuals in certain games.

"We just need a little bit of clarification and we're pleased that they've accepted our invitation and we can have conversations. There are any number of themes.

"But it's probably better to have the talks first with the people involved. Will we tell you what happens? Well it depends how it goes."