Tottenham have to play nine finals to get into top four, asserts Toby Alderweireld
With the Premier League restarting their season, for Tottenham it will be a fight to get into the top four and Toby Alderweireld has admitted that the club have to see their final games as finals. The North Londoners sit outside the top four with them seven points behind fourth place Chelsea.
Tottenham’s horrendous start to the season has the North London side as low as 14th in the Premier League table after they won just three out of their opening twelve games. That run included losses to Newcastle United, Leicester City, Brighton and Liverpool with Mauricio Pochettino losing his job soon after that run. He was replaced by Jose Mourinho but the Portuguese manager has struggled to whip the team back into the running for a top four place.
While their form did pick up, a three-game winless run with them dropping from 5th place to 8th before an unforeseen break because of the coronavirus put Spurs in a bad spot with nine games left in the season. They sit seven points behind fourth-place Chelsea with their chance at a top four place slipping but Toby Alderweireld admitted that Tottenham needs to think of their final nine games as finals if they want to play Champions League football.
“I know it’s a cliche but it’s nine games and we have to see it as nine finals. We have to get good momentum and the first is a very big game. We are going to do everything we can to reach the top four,” Alderweireld told the Guardian.
With the Premier League’s restart being rushed to help complete the season in time, fans and critics fear that players may not be fully fit to handle playing nine games in one month with concerns that the number of injuries will only increase. But the Belgian added that everyone at Tottenham is in great shape with them continuously training during the break and that has continued once training was officially resumed by the clubs across the league.
“Everyone went into ‘beast mode’, training, training. We didn’t know when we were going back, maybe the week after, two weeks after. So people think in the weeks or months we were on holiday but we sure weren’t. We had the GPS to send all the information to the club so they could compare it with what we needed to be doing and compare how many accelerations or decelerations we were doing; how much high-speed running, the kilometres we have run.
“They were comparing us, of course, but that’s positive, that’s top sport, it would be strange if you didn’t want to compete with others. Everyone was quite similar. Of course, you have good runners, some players are more powerful, but everyone was close and that means everyone was putting the work in. It’s not easy because you don’t know when you’re starting back again,” he added.
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