SPURS MUST KEEP PUSHING IN TITLE RACE: VERTONGHEN
TOTTENHAM Hotspur defender Jan Vertonghen has said his team must keep pushing for the Premier League title despite trailing Chelsea by an imposing seven points with eight games remaining.
Spurs, currently second in the league, completed a remarkable comeback to defeat Swansea City 3-1 on Wednesday, while Chelsea remained on course for their fifth league title with a 2-1 win over fourth-placed Manchester City.
“Chelsea is looking very strong but we can’t stop pushing and dreaming of the league,” Vertonghen said.
“They had a big win but they have a couple of difficult games coming up. We have to keep winning and hopefully they get a bit stressed.”
Spurs are set for their second consecutive top-four league finish under Mauricio Pochettino and Vertonghen believes their rivals now consider the North London club as one of the main title contenders.
“Teams are thinking about us now if they’re talking about league wins or top four.
“Before it was that Tottenham will finish fifth or sixth,” the Belgian defender added.
“I don’t know what is necessary to win the league – maybe a bit of luck – but I think this group has massive quality and is very special.”
Chelsea, who must face sixthplaced Manchester United and seventh-placed Everton on the road, visit 13th-placed Bournemouth today.
Spurs, who have won their last five league encounters, host 10thplaced Watford.
Meanwhile, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes his side can benefit by emulating Premier League leaders Chelsea, especially in their ability to close matches out from a winning position.
Klopp was left fuming after Bournemouth scored a late equaliser in Wednesday’s 2-2 draw at Anfield to hinder the Merseyside club’s chances of qualifying for next season’s Champions League via a top-four finish.
Experience
“Probably (if it was) Chelsea, for example, the opponent would not have the ball three times in the last 20 minutes I think,” Klopp, whose side have dropped 15 points from winning positions this season, told British media.
“Yes, we don’t have this experience. Probably you need things like that to get more experience than this, even though (the result) was not that good... We have to get more experience in this, for sure.”
Liverpool are third in the league, six points above fifth-placed Arsenal although they have played two games more than the north London side.
Striker Divock Origi, however, saw no reason to panic just yet.
“The situation is not dramatic, we still have a lot to play for,” he told the club’s website. “We knew that the race would be tight but, as you’ve seen, other teams that go for the top four can drop points as well.
“We have to move forward and make sure that the things that went less well don’t happen again and just try and take as many points as possible.”
This week, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte gave short shrift to media reports linking him with a move away from the English Premier League leaders and said he was eager to build “something important” at Stamford Bridge.
The former Juventus boss, who admitted last month he has struggled adjust to life in England without his family, has been linked with a return to Italy with Inter Milan.
Speculation went into overdrive, however, after Italian agent Federico Pastorello said Conte might find offers from “historical clubs” difficult to resist.
“I don’t like it when others speak for me. Pastorello is a friend, I know him well, but I don’t like when others speak for me,” Conte told British media.
“If someone wants to know something about me, then they must ask me. We’re fighting for the title and we want to achieve this goal, then we’ll try to build something important together.”
When asked whether that meant he will be at Chelsea next season, Conte added: “Yes, for the next season.”
Winger Eden Hazard is another Chelsea employee who has been linked with a move away from the club, with British media reporting strong interest from Real Madrid.
Chelsea’s Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, however, felt his compatriot would not become distracted by such talk over the last few weeks of the season.
“Eden is not affected by the speculation. He is just calm,” said Courtois, who has also been linked with a move to the Spanish giants.
“He knows that he is important to Chelsea, like I do. We are both very happy to be here. The game against City was my 100th for Chelsea, and I hope to have many more.”
West Ham United manager Slaven Bilic has called on his players to drop their egos and work as one in order to end their woeful run of five consecutive Premier League defeats when they host relegation-threatened Swansea City today.
West Ham’s worrying run of form threatens to drag the club into the bottom three as they sit 15th in the table, five points above the relegation zone with seven games remaining. A loss to Swansea would see that gap cut to just two points.
“We have to leave our egos in our beds and be as one,” Bilic told British media. “I am not saying we weren’t before – but now more than ever. We have to put everything we have on the line.”
West Ham left Upton Park, their home for 112 years, to move to the London Stadium this season but their switch is yet to yield dividends as the club have had to deal with fan unrest and crowd trouble during the current campaign.
The club have also struggled to recreate the menacing atmosphere of Upton Park, but Bilic was confident West Ham will reap the longterm benefits of the switch.
“The move always had a lot of positives but it also had negative things, especially short-term. One of those negative things is the time – you need time to adjust. That goes with a new stadium,” he added.
“In the long term it is the best thing that the club has ever done. Make no mistake about it.” – Reuters