Ben Davies has revealed that Antonio Conte was ‘very calm’ after Tottenham Hotspur managed to put in a disciplined performance to come away with a 1-1 draw at Anfield.
Spurs seemingly executed their game plan to perfection, restricting the home side to barely any chances, with the Reds reduced to playing crosses into the box for the majority of the encounter.
In fact, even the home side’s equaliser came off a speculative long-range effort from Luis Diaz, which took a huge deflection to wrong-foot Hugo Lloris.
Conte was his usual animated self on the touchline, kicking and heading every ball, but Davies admitted the Italian was a lot more reserved and analytical in the changing room.
When asked how Conte reacted to the performance, the Welshman told Football.London: “He was very calm, very calm.
“You can feel there’s pride there in how we played, how we stuck to the game plan but in the next few days 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. We know we can get better.”
Tottenham’s draw at Anfield means the Lilywhites are unbeaten in their four games against Manchester City and Liverpool this season. Davies insisted that these sorts of performances in big games show that the team is heading in the right direction under Conte.
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He said: “These are the kind of games we want to be involved in and show our best side in. It was a tough game, we were up against one of the best teams in the world right now and we’re satisfied with a point away from home.
“We played against two of the best teams in the world football [in Liverpool and Manchester City] and to be unbeaten is a good little achievement but the league position will show where we deserve to end up and who we pick up points against isn’t really a concern.
“I like to think [we’re heading in the right direction]. We have to try to be competitive against the best teams. I think we’ve shown that this year. We’ve got to up our consistency.
“We have struggled with that for a while but we’ve got to take the positives with results against teams like this.”
The point against Liverpool was not of major help to Spurs in the race for fourth, with Arsenal beating Leeds on Sunday to go four points clear of their North London rivals.
Conte’s men now know they have to win the North London derby on Thursday to keep pace with the Gunners, and Davies admitted that he and his teammates have been looking forward to the clash for a long time.
He said: “It’s a massive game. It’s been building up to this for a while. Ever since it got postponed, we’ve been looking at when this game would come because we knew it would be important in the context of the season.
“Look 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 go out and try to put in a similar performance as we did today.
“We have to do whatever we can control. 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.
“For us, we have to control what we can and try to win the game, try to win our remaining games. It’s not in our hands but we’ll see what happens.”
Spurs Web Opinion
In the context of the race for fourth, the point at Anfield does not mean a lot, as the permutations would have still remained the same had we lost.
We essentially have to beat Arsenal in the derby and hope that they slip up in one of their final two games – which is very much possible.
In fact, I believe the Gunners could crumble under the pressure if we manage to overturn them on Thursday.
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