How is Richarlison's calf?

Not good. He will miss the next two games. Nothing serious but obviously enough to keep him out of the next two games. Bissouma unfortunately picked up a knee injury in the weekend’s game so he will miss the last two games of the season as well. Everyone else who played is OK.

A proportion of fans won't want you to win this game...

A proportion of our fans? What does that mean? What proportion? Really? 50%? 20%? 1%? You don’t know, OK. So let’s answer a question we don’t know the answer to. Yeah, that’s fine. People are allowed to feel the way they do.

I think I have been really consistent and I think really strong in my beliefs that it is important for this football club to get to where to want to, to a) not look for some silver bullet that is going to get us to where we want. It is hard work, it is perseverance, it is resilience, it is quality that will get us where we want. Not to fall for any sort of false dawns or short-term result reactions. Stick to the course. Thirdly, know what real success looks like. Real success looks like trophies. Anything else in between, bragging rights, whatever it is, it is absolutely meaningless to me, to anyone involved with me. We have a game tomorrow we want to win.

How will the players handle the atmosphere?

What atmosphere? So you think the majority of our fans will want us to not win tomorrow night? I don’t see it that way. I think the majority of our fans will create the atmosphere they always create at our home games. Irrespective, we have a game of football to win and that is what we are going to try to do.

Do you take confidence against them, with the club's recent home record against City?

My recent record is one loss against Manchester City, mate. I am not going to take any confidence from that. What I will take confidence from is that we have an opportunity to measure ourselves against the best tomorrow night, a team that is consistently striving for honours. A team we want to try to emulate one day. The best way to do that is to measure yourself against them by being yourself. We will go out there tomorrow night, play our football and see where it takes us.

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How big a test is this, given you have just got back to winning ways?

It does not really matter. Any time you play against Man City — particularly towards the end of the year, when they always seem to be at their best — it is a hell of a challenge, whether you have gone into it winning nine in a row or, like us, just one game. It is always going to be a test but that is the exciting bit. You want the test, you want the opportunity to take them on. We get that at home tomorrow.

With the Champions League race, will you be watching Villa tonight?

Yeah I will be watching the game, because it’s a good game of football between two good teams. I never stress or worry about things I can’t control. What I do know is that we have two games to go, six points to play for, and we want to try and see how many of those points we can get.

Will Richarlison travel to Australia for next week's friendly?

Just depending on the medical treatment. The whole group will travel to Australia unless there's medical treatment needed. But he wouldn't be available for the game - it's just too close.

Have you ever been in this position before? Your biggest rivals wanting you to win?

I don't know - I've never thought about sport in that way. Like I said, there's a pretty simple notion to this - there's a game of football tomorrow night. What do you think is going to happen? What do you think we're going to do as a team? Or any team on this planet. Aren't we just going to try and win? It's a simple, basic premise. Now how that makes people feel, I'm not really fussed. I don't really care. I'd hate to think that anyone will think we'll go out there tomorrow with anything other than trying to measure ourselves against a top team and maybe win a game of football that's consequential. How are we ever going to become a team that wins things if in the big games we shy away from it. Why would we shy away from a challenge tomorrow that exists? Look, I get it. Your straw poll of Arsenal fans if it's correct, and if we walk out to 50 per cent boos tomorrow and 50 per cent cheering... but I think that's highly unlikely.

In the last few games we've seen your centre-backs popping up in unusual positions to score. Will we be seeing more of that?

That's part of our evolution, and the great thing for us, especially in this tough spell, is that I see how players react to it. I think there are certain individuals that have really gritted their teeth and wanted to change the course of events and not accept it. And probably because of the nature of where we are as a team at the moment it's been the defenders - and not just the centre-halves, Pedro scored an unbelievable goal at the weekend. But I've loved seeing that, I've loved seeing the growth of guys like Micky and Romero and others, who we would never see unless we went through tough times and I think that's important. It's one of those things where you think if we can tap into it going forward, because we'll obviously have other challenges and those kind of guys are showing the way to change the course of events. For me, that's really something to grasp on to.

Can you just talk about the achievement of winning so many titles in a row like City are trying to do?

Yeah, incredible. I think sometimes people think once you win it once it should become easier, but actually it makes it more difficult. You've got a target on your back, and you have to get guys to consistently climb the mountain again, knowing that they've already done it. Particularly in the Premier League and you know the demands of the competition, and City are always fighting on multiple fronts in terms of competitions. I think it's a testament not just to Pep but to the whole organisation - they've stayed really disciplined with a blueprint of how they want to achieve success, and they're bearing that fruit.

From your perspective as a football fan, how much of an issue is it when you've got a team like Manchester City with this level of dominance, and they could win four in a row?

Well they haven't done it yet. That's an important point. They haven't done it yet but if you think they have, then it does become an issue because everyone is putting down the red carpet for them. I'm not going to do that. I don't think other managers would do that. I'm certainly not going to sit down and watch them win again. That doesn't sit comfortably with me.

That's in the hands of each club to try to break that dominance and try to create teams that will challenge their dominance. As a supporter I've always felt, I have been a supporter of the game and I have supported clubs when I was younger, I was just interested in my club. I didn't care about anyone else. I just wanted my club to win, I just wanted my club to be successful. I couldn't care less about other teams other than hating them to the core of my being, but apart from that I just wanted my team to be successful.

I'd say the majority of Spurs fans I know are saying they want the team to lose and laughing at your rivals has always been a big part of football, do you think it's becoming in the social media age, a bigger thing than normal?

Well yeah if you're going by social media then probably 99% of supporters who don't [want Spurs to win], but please don't tell me that's your world Charlie. There's a bigger world out there mate. We'll need to have a counselling session if that's your world.

To me, I don't understand it, I never will. I understand rivalry. I was part of one of the biggest ones in the world in the last couple of years with Celtic and Rangers and I understand the rivalry but I've never and will never understand if someone wants their own team to lose. That's not what sport is about. It's not what I love about the game. What I love more than anything in the game is the competitiveness, challenging yourself to beat someone and coming out successful. Anything outside of that it's got nothing to do with sport. It's got nothing to do with me.

If other people want to treat it that way, that they get pleasure from other people's misery, that's not how I've lived my life and how I perceive my role. My role is to bring success to this football club and whatever proportion, whether it's his two mates or 99% of people you know, I know 100% of Spurs supporters want us to win, be successful and win trophies. That is without a shadow of a doubt and us winning tomorrow night will help us bring joy to 100% of Spurs supporters.

With Micky in the left-back role, you mentioned he hasn’t done that because of the physicality. Does that mean it is unrealistic tomorrow?

Look I think I have said it a number of times, and you can either take me on face value or not, is that I make decisions on all the information I have and that information is not always available to the general public for good reason. There are reasons why we do what we do. Micky has had an unbelievable first season and the standing and levels he has played at. But we want him here for a long time and for him to be the best possible player he can be.

Part of that is that he has had a couple of injuries and we need to be careful about how and where we use him, and why we use him in those areas. Not just him. A lot of the players particularly when you are talking about the physical output in different areas. So it doesn't mean we won't pay him there tomorrow night or weekend. But the reasons are made with the full information at hand.

In the lap of appreciation you usually have trophies to show off when you've done that? Does that drive you on to provide them next season?

You can look at these things two ways and it is important you acknowledge the fans. We have a game tomorrow but it is a late game so we thought it was better to do that at the weekend as they have been a good part of the season stuck behind us from day one, appreciate what we are trying to do. A lot of our home games have been exciting victories and our supporters have helped.

It was a chance to say thanks to them for their support this season. The families make the massive sacrifices during the season and it gives them the little bit of acknowledgement that they more than deserve.

I often say to the players, 'when all is said and done the fans might move on to new heroes and you guys will not be talking about them, people won’t call them up as much, but their families will be there after their career finishes'.

So it is important that you appreciate them while you are in your career. It was a nice moment. I was not out there celebrating anything. That will come, that is the plan. But at the same time you should take a moment to be thankful, for me that is important in that moment, the club I am at, the supporters who are supporting me and family who allow me to do what I want.

Richarlison was left out of Copa America squad due to injury, now the scan results are back, would he have been fit if selected?

No, he will probably miss three, four weeks at least from what I understand.

Dane Scarlett looked bright at the weekend, what is the next step for him?

Like all the young guys, it is just about making an impact when you get opportunities and trying to build a body of work which allows them to progress their careers. Dane's had a frustrating year. His loan move didn't work out and he's had limited opportunities in the first-team, but he is there, he's in the squad at the moment and he got some minutes the other day. He had a couple of good moments and might get opportunities in the last two games. It is like any young player, you've got to take the opportunities put before you and make an impact to grow your career.

Will it be Hojbjerg in for Bissouma or do you have other options you're thinking about there?

No, we've got some options in there. Pierre and Rodri came on and did well the other night to replace Biss. Skippy is always an option in there, so we've got options in midfield. Disappointing for Biss because I thought his last three games, he was back to his early season form and he felt that as well. He's had a disrupted season and as I said, it's the way our season seems to have gone. No one has had a clear run of games to really build on and disappointing for him. He was desperate to play. Again, I think with Biss this year as much as it has been disrupting for him, I think it sets him up really well for next year because he'll know what our expectations are, he'll know the levels he can reach playing our football and I am sure he will start pre-season ready to make an impact.

Man City have produced some great academy players, where is Spurs' academy at and can any of the players in there break through next season?

Yeah, look I think this year the Under-21s and Under-18s have shown some real promise and real growth, which is important but it's a big step between that and playing first-team football. You mention Manchester City and there are various ways to get to the first-team. Guys like Foden and Palmer didn't go out on loan, they stayed there, trained with the first-team without many opportunities and eventually broke through. Others went out on loan, so I think there is different ways, but what I do know with young players is your best chance of having them come in and make an impact is to have a real stable, senior environment.

That's what we're trying to build at the moment. I don't think throwing youngsters in when things are chaotic or turbulent is the best time, even though sometimes there is a tendency to do that, when you're desperate to just throw young players in. I think for real development for the ones that you really believe have got potential to make it, it is can you bring them into an environment where it is already established in terms of the way the team plays, the culture of the place and in terms of the first-team that's what we've been trying to build this year.

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