Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino does not plan to man-mark West Ham's Dimitri Payet
Saturday 19 November 2016 11:13, UK
Mauricio Pochettino has told his Tottenham players to pay special attention to Dimitri Payet on Saturday, but says there is no plan to man-mark the West Ham playmaker.
Payet is the Hammers' greatest threat to Spurs but Pochettino has not asked any of his players to mark the Frenchman out of the game.
He said: "We never play like this. We have played against top players during my two and a half years at Tottenham and you can see we never focus on that type of player, like Eden Hazard or David Silva who can change a game.
"It never was my intention, when I started out as a manager, facing Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, to try to do something special or be focused on trying to stop this type of player.
"The most important thing is to try to recover the ball quickly, to have the ball more than them, to try to focus on how we need to damage our opponent.
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"The players who are in his zone need to be aggressive, tight, try to anticipate, and not give him space to play.
"It's true that we're talking about that. But it's not a special mark on him."
