Villas-Boas Lauds New Attacking Plan for Tottenham's European Assault

Tottenham Hotspur manager Andre Villas-Boas is confident his restocked side are now a "totally different proposition" to that of last year, lauding the creative qualities he now has at his disposal.

After spending in excess of £100m during the summer transfer window, Spurs appeared to have adequately supplemented the loss of Gareth Bale with seven new faces across a variety of positions.

While Vlad Chiriches, Etienne Capoue and Paulinho have sufficiently strengthened his defensive and midfield options, it is the attacking additions to his team that exhilarates the Portuguese coach the most.

In Nacer Chadli, Christian Eriksen, Roberto Soldado and record signing Erik Lamela, the club now boast an array of potent options of the required ability to help the club play the "creative football" their manager desires.

With just two goals conceded in their opening six Premier League games, the most notable facet of the club's strong start to the season has been in defence. But Villas-Boas is positive his creative additions will gel and solidify the club's hopes of improving on last season's fifth place finish and a quarter final exit in the Europa League.

"We re-strengthened well, mostly with creative players who possess great ability on the ball," Villas-Boas told UEFA's official website.

"All of them will have difficulties adapting to the pace of the Premier League, but all of them are creative players. A couple of them have gone through adaption very quickly, the likes of Paulinho, Soldado and Capoue, and we expect the others to do so because they are wonderfully gifted players."

Although much of Tottenham's focus this season is likely to be on rectifying last season's failure to qualify for the Champions League, the club are well poised to challenge for Europe's other major honour.

A visit to Anzhi Makhachkala awaits following the club's group opening win over Tromso, and after being eliminated at the quarter final stage last season, Villas-Boas has indicated he will not use the competition as an excuse to rest his most influential players this time around.

"Last year we were also in a very difficult group and this year it's the same," the Tottenham boss continued.

"Our objective is to progress. We know we have to make a big, big effort regarding the trips, but we will be ready and we have learned from last season that we can't use the Europa League as an excuse.

"We have to use it as an example and the players will be fully motivated to do it this season too."