Antonio Conte makes life easy for Spurs with ‘incredible’ attention to detail

Tottenham defender Ben Davies believes head coach Antonio Conte’s meticulous attention to detail makes it easy for the players once they enter the pitch.

A second draw of the season against Liverpool, having already taken six points off defending champions Manchester City, has shown Spurs can compete with the Premier League’s top sides.

Conte had a full week to prepare for the challenge at Anfield, where Klopp’s team had not failed to win since October, and the disciplined way in which they approached their task was rewarded.

The Spurs boss set up in a 5-4-1 formation and ensured the Reds’ wide threats of Mohamed Salah and the in-form Luis Diaz were double-marked when in possession and that negated much of the host’s threat.

“He’s a very detail-oriented manager. All week we have been preparing for this game,” said Davies.

“The level of detail he works to is incredible. It’s more of a case we look after ourselves first rather than who we are playing against.

“We’ve got a way of playing which I think is pretty clear, he’s drilled that into us since he arrived and it will be small tweaks based on who we are playing, how we press, how we defend.

“I have to say he makes it very, very easy for you on the pitch.

“We played against two of the best teams in world football right now and to be unbeaten is a good little achievement but, at the end of the day, the league position will show where we deserve to be.

“Who we pick up points against isn’t really too much of our concern. We’ve got to up our consistency, we struggled with that for a while.”

While the draw was creditable at Anfield the point did little for their own top-four aspirations as they could not overtake fourth-placed Arsenal, who they face on Thursday.

The north London derby was postponed in January after the Premier League accepted Arsenal’s request to call off the match after the Gunners claimed they had many players currently unavailable across our squad as a result of Covid, injuries and Africa Cup of Nations duty.

“It’s a massive game. It has been building up to this for a while now,” added Davies.

“Ever since it got postponed we were looking to when this game would come because we knew it would be important in the context of the season.

“For us now Thursday is huge. We know what we have to do going into it.

“There’s no hiding from that. We have to go out there and put in a similar performance (to the Liverpool one).

“We have to do whatever we can control. They’ve been on a fantastic run, you can’t hide from that but there is a lot of pressure to keep it up and do it in the remaining games.

“We have to control what we can, try and win the game and try to win our remaining games. It’s not in our hands but we will see what happens.”