Friedel dismisses Tottenham crisis talk

Spurs have failed to win any of their last four Premier League games, picking up just one point from a possible 12.

A late Rafael van der Vaart equaliser on Wednesday was enough to rescue a point against Stoke City, after Cameron Jerome opened the scoring in the 1-1 draw at White Hart Lane.

Their poor run of form has seen them surrender a 10-point lead over fierce rivals Arsenal, who leapfrogged their neighbours into third following a 1-0 win over Everton.

A daunting trip to rivals Chelsea is next up for Harry Redknapp's side, a venue where they have not won since 1990, and Friedel insists the fixture is not a must-not-lose encounter, telling the London Evening Standard:

"Football is not pressure. It might be for some, if you want to heap the pressure on then that's you as an individual person. But you play football, it's a game.

"We want to play well, we want to win but we all saw here [at White Hart Lane] last Saturday [when Fabrice Muamba collapsed having suffered a cardiac arrest] what pressure was.

"I've got three kids and raising them is far more pressure than a football match.

"I don't think it's about holding your nerve, it's about going out and enjoying yourself and expressing yourself because those are the type of players we have.

"It's continuing what we've been doing all season long. Sometimes you can play very poorly and win a game and then nobody says anything.

"But we've been playing really good football without getting the results we want.

"I'm not concerned at all and we will go into the Chelsea game confident, expecting a good result."

Nick Moore

Nick Moore is a freelance journalist based on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. He wrote his first FourFourTwo feature in 2001 about Gerard Houllier's cup-treble-winning Liverpool side, and has continued to ink his witty words for the mag ever since. Nick has produced FFT's 'Ask A Silly Question' interview for 16 years, once getting Peter Crouch to confess that he dreams about being a dwarf.