BIRMINGHAM -- Tottenham boss Roberto De Zerbi said he has "twelve players" on the pitch when Conor Gallagher is on song after the midfielder scored a crucial goal in Spurs' 2-1 win over Aston Villa on Sunday.
Spurs capitalised on West Ham's bruising defeat to Brentford on Saturday and jumped out of the relegation zone with three points in Birmingham.
De Zerbi's side put in one of their best showings of the season as a stunning Gallagher strike from distance, his first goal for the club, followed by a Richarlison header, put them two up inside half an hour.
Emiliano BuendÃa got one back in stoppage time for Villa but it proved merely a consolation as Spurs registered back-to-back league wins for the first time since August.
Gallagher's strike proved vital though and it was his first since joining the club from Atlético Madrid in January for €40 million ($44m). He came through the ranks at fellow London club Chelsea before then.
And asked if Gallagher, had rediscovered the version of himself that was at Chelsea, De Zerbi responded: "Yeah, absolutely.
"When Gallagher plays like this, we play with twelve players because you can find him as a striker, as a midfielder, as a full back everywhere on the pitch, you can find him.
"Great player, great passion, great qualities."
Despite the three points taking Spurs out of the relegation zone for the first time since early April, De Zerbi insisted he was more pleased with the manner of the performance from his team.
"Very pleased for the performance. We won a great game against a great Aston Villa [side]," De Zerbi said.
"They have to play Thursday, a very important game for them [Europe League semifinal]. But anyway, it's always very tough playing against [Unai] Emery, again in this stadium, very hard stadium. And for that, I'm really pleased.
"Without the ball, we showed a great courage and with the ball, great qualities. I'm happy for this type of performance more than three points.
"Because three points, okay, we have one point more than West Ham, but the most important thing today, tonight, is to play a great game, to believe more and more in ourselves, to believe in our qualities."
Aston Villa made seven, ultimately unsuccessful changes ahead of the Sunday evening kickoff, with one eye on their return leg against Nottingham Forest in the Europa League semifinal on Thursday.
But despite the result manager Unai Emery passionately defended that decision when asked if it was the right call in his post-match news conference.
"We analysed deeply a lot of things about the players playing the starting 11," he said.
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"Maybe it's better to continue playing with the same players, but we lost... And I made some changes against Sunderland. And we won. You were not asking about those changes in that moment because we won.
"If we were losing, you ask [why] you change. And I know before the match my challenge is to win with some changes.
"But I believe in the players and if someone doesn't believe in the players, the supporters or the media or someone, OK don't believe but its not different when we are winning or losing, when we are winning I make changes as well.
"But of course I accept as well some criticism."
