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This is Rebecca Loew or Rebecca Loewa if you listen to Suboptimal Radio and you are listening to Men in Blazers on the NBC Sports Network.

Welcome to a Men in Blazers pod special. Our guest today is the muscular brain of a spurs team that's not lost in 10 games currently sitting on the TV.

I have loved watching this man play from the very beginning of his Tottenham career. His uncle Andrew Croaker, a long time great friend of the pod in England, talked Erick up every time we saw him in Rio during the World Cup.

And when we selected Erick as our player to watch last year, he made us look like the geniuses that we're not because he scored twice in his first two games from right back no less.

Since then, he's made the switch to defensive midfielder and his tenacity in the tackle has provided cover for a spurs back for the repelled old comers.

This weekend they head to heated rival second place Arsenal for a massive, a massive North London Darby on Sunday. We welcome to the pod the dire wolf, Mr Erick Dyer.

Erick, you're career. It's been one of the most fascinating journeys in English football. In 2004, your mother Louise was hired to run the hospitality program for the European Championship in Portugal.

She moved your entire family, five siblings and stayed there. So from seven years of age, you came of age in Portugal. This is like Tarzan's story. You were raised by wolves.

You came through at the sporting Lisbon Academy, same youth system that produced Figo and Ronaldo. You learned the game on gravel pitches, Erick. Not grass, not turf, but gravel.

It was gravel. It was a good learning curve playing on those pitches. They were nice to play on, but I'm sure they helped me a lot now and I play on the surfaces I do now.

It makes me very grateful because I've played on before and I was very Portugal.

When I watch you play, your decision making stands out and I read, you talking about the youth development philosophy in Portugal. You said in England, the coaches scream at their young players. In Portugal, the coaches sit on the bench and don't say a word. And you get to understand the game a lot better that way from your own mistakes.

You said, for me, the sign of a bad player is someone who makes the same mistake twice. Can you talk about that?

It's simple, really. It's just over there in Portugal, I think they believed in that we have to make our own mistakes and learn for themselves. Of course, they helped you and they'd correct you on little things and try to help you out, but during matches, you made a mistake.

They would never say anything to you, they'd expect you to learn from the mistake yourself and correct it yourself.

You talk a lot about the mental side of the game. You talk about how you're a mix of the Portuguese relaxed mentality and the hard working approach of an English bloke. What type of you play? Do you see as Portuguese and what do you see as English?

I think I've got a good mixture to the others. I've got the natural English attitude. I like to think that I do everything into it. I give 100 percent and I look to be aggressive and win every ball that I can.

But then at the same time, I think I'm quite calm, which I think has come from living in Portugal those years. I keep a cool head, boy step on me helps, especially when you're trying to play an aggressive type of work. I think it's important that you keep a cool head sometimes.

Came back to England as a 17-year-old to Everton. This pains me. I read a quote that you came purposefully to add an English steal to your Portuguese technique. You're quite a hard man, a proper hard man. I am an Evertonian. I saw you square up to Lukaku this season without any fear at all. Your physicality. Is that English or is that Portuguese?

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