Derby pressure is on Arsenal not to slip up, insists Spurs star Davies
TOTTENHAM defender Ben Davies insists the pressure will be on Arsenal in Thursday’s north London derby, despite the Gunners opening up a four-point gap on their rivals yesterday.
Arsenal go into the match knowing a win will be enough to clinch fourthplace and Champions League football after they beat Leeds 2-1 yesterday.
The result followed Spurs’ draw at Liverpool and means Antonio Conte’s side have to win their remaining three games and hope the Gunners slip up against Newcastle or Everton.
“It’s a massive game,” said Davies. “It’s been building up to this for a while. Ever since it got postponed [in January], we’ve been looking at when this game would come, because we knew it would be important in the context of the season. For us now, Thursday’s huge. We know what we have to do going into it and there’s no hiding from that.
“We have to do whatever we can. They’ve been on a fantastic run, you can’t hide from that, but there’s a lot of pressure on them to keep it up and do it in the remaining games. We have to try to win the game, try to win our remaining games. It’s not in our hands, but we’ll see what happens.”
Conte’s impressive game plan on Saturday halted Liverpool’s 12-game winning run at Anfield and derailed their title bid, and Davies said of his manager: “He’s very detail-orientated. We look after ourselves first rather than who we’re playing against.
“He makes it very, very easy for us out on the pitch. You know your role, you know your responsibilities. If this man’s running here,you knowwhereyou need to be. If you’re running in this zone, you know where you have to be. The level of detail he works to is incredible.
“He’s very calm [after matches]. You can feel there’s pride there in how we played [at Anfield], how we stuck to the game plan, but we’ll analyse it in detail, see where we can improve, and it’ll be on to the next one. There’s no resting on good performances.”
Before Saturday, Spurs had not taken a point from Anfield since a 2-2 draw in 2018, and Eric Dier says it was the “first time in a while” they had gone there believing they could win.
“Saying it is one thing, but the way we felt before the game and the way we played [proved it],” Dier said. “We believed we could win.”
Looking ahead to Thursday, Dier added: “It’s going to be a fantastic game. In our hands or not, all we can do is focus on ourselves and be prepared.”