Troy Deeney shares insight into what it was like to play Spurs

On his podcast with Graeme Souness and Simon Jordan, Troy Deeney has been speaking about what it was like to play against Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League with Watford, during his five year Premier League stint with the Hornets.

He said: "We always felt that they were an excellent team. So I played against the Pochettino team that had Kane, Dele Alli, Eriksen, really, really good team. The team that ended up going to semi-finals".

Souness responsed with: "Yeah but none of them are people that dig in when the going gets tough." Deeney responded with: "No, but they are exceptional football players, and you were like 'woah, we're going to have a really tough game today, they're probably going to score'. But one thing we always felt was, we'll get a chance. Someone will mess up here."

Simon Jordan asked "Why was that a thought about Tottenham?" to which, the former Watford striker said: "I don't know. It was the same with Arsenal at the time. It was repeated history that you could see. Whenever someone roughed them up, or you got a load of crosses in the box, someone just didn't fancy it, and we always felt like we did.

We ended up beating them [Spurs] one game, 2-1, very early on in the season, the season they ended up going to the semi-final [of the Champions League] and we were 1-0 down, but the second we made a few tackles, it was like 'oh here we go, we're gonna win this'. I don't know where it comes from, [but] there's a feeling when you're on the pitch and you just know 'he don't fancy it.'"

Interesting comments from a player that played Spurs ten times with Watford, winning once and scoring one goal, losing six times in the process. Whilst there is no doubt that aforementioned 2-1 win was a poor game, it was most certainly the exception rather than the rule when Watford would play Spurs.

As it happens, Deeney said earlier this week that he was in talks to join Tottenham back in the summer of 2020.