Brighton & Hove Albion manager Chris Hughton met the media on Monday afternoon to preview Tuesday evening’s game against Tottenham Hotspur.
The Albion boss discussed the side’s upcoming opponents, discussed a potential survival points tally, assessed the team’s run-in to the end of the campaign and praised newly crowned Premier League winners, Manchester City.
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
"We’ll need to play well on Tuesday – we’re at home but we know that they’ll have the bulk of possession because of the way they play, they’re an expansive side.
"They’ve had an outstanding season and have really developed each year, so we’ll have to play at a good level and nullify their strengths and threats that they have."
"But we also have to be a threat ourselves, we can’t defend for too long in the game because they have good quality."
TOTTENHAM’S CUP DISTRACTION?
"I don’t think they’ll be distracted by Saturday – with the aspirations that come with a club like theirs, they still have the ability to finish in second place in the league.
"What you find with the top clubs is that they’re used to any rotation they have to make because they tend to go far in a lot of competitions – I think they’ll be focused on us firstly and then Manchester United once our game with them is out of the way."
ON A ‘SAFE’ POINTS TOTAL
"You can look at some of the results this season – our one at home to Arsenal for example, to show that it’s such a competitive division. I don’t think you can afford to go into any game with a defeatist attitude.
"We need to make sure we have a team who will look forward to playing in every game.
"I honestly can’t afford to think that way as manager – I think we’ll need points but nobody knows the number we'll need. Every team in this division is capable of winning any game.
"The best way to approach it is to think that we’ll need some points out of these final few games."
CHALLENGE OF THE RUN-IN
"We can’t afford to fear the sequence of matches that we have left – over the season we’ve handled ourselves very well on the whole.
"This club has worked hard to get into this division to play against this quality of opponent – what we need to do is take where we are in this league into these games.
"For long spells this season we’ve managed to stay in a healthy position in the league, we have to take our strengths from that."
ON MANCHESTER CITY
"We played them in our first game of the season when they had a good summer – as the season went on we started to think it may not have been a bad time to play them because we met them before they got into the rhythm of their game.
"They’ve been absolutely outstanding – in both the way they’ve played and dominated games, as well as being strong in defence too – whenever a side has a season like the one they’ve had, you tend to look at the individuals involved.
"There are so many players who’ve stood out this season and that’s a mark of a top quality team, and most are looking forward to seeing how they develop now."