JAMES Tarkowski admitted Burnley did some soul searching in their bid to get out of a winless run.

But after celebrating three points for the first time in nine Premier League games, against Brighton last week - thanks to his first half goal, the defender feels the Clarets have rediscovered the characteristics that inspired a season to remember last year.

And ahead of this afternoon’s game against Spurs at Wembley, Tarkowski says they will need to pool all their positives to stop England team-mate Harry Kane and co.

“He’s regarded as one of the best strikers in the world right now and you can see by the amount of goals he’s scoring,” said Tarkowski, who is feeling better equipped to cope with the demands of top flight football after recovering from a secondary hernia operation.

“You’ve got to do your job and restrict him as much as possible.

“That’s difficult because they have got some great players, but that’s part and parcel of being a defender in the Premier League.

“I’ve had a difficult time with the injury.

“I tried to play through with it, but it got to the point where I needed to bite the bullet and get myself 100 per cent, which I am now.

“It was more the training I was struggling with.

“I was having to take my training down during the week to be okay for the weekend and that started to affect my fitness a little bit.

“In the end I needed to bite the bullet, get myself sorted and now I feel really good.

“I was hindered slightly I was going out there with the mindset of ‘am I okay to play?’ rather than the mindset of ‘let’s go out and perform right’.

“Now I’m 100 per cent fit I can concentrate on my football.

“If you’re going to play Harry at any time, it’s probably best to face him when you’re feeling your best.”

And Tarkowski admitted the dressing room heart-to-heart did the team good as a whole too.

“I think it’s hard to pinpoint why we weren’t picking up results,” the 26-year-old explained.

“We sort of lost it (grittiness). I don’t know how or why.

“We just seemed to lose it and it seemed to affect us quite a lot. But we seem to have found it again.

“We sat down between ourselves and talked through why we didn’t think it was going our way.

“We didn’t dwell on it too much because there’s always another game coming up.

“Hopefully we can now put in the performances needed in this league and Saturday was a good start.

“That was a classic Burnley performance at the weekend where we were not at our best, but we still managed to get a result.”

The win lifted the Clarets out of the bottom three, but defender Tarkowski warned: “That’s just a start for us.

“There are a lot of points we still need to get on the board.

“We need to go out and show how good we can be. The weekend was a nice start, but we have a long way to go.”