AVB expects battle for fourth
Tottenham boss Andre Villas-Boas is fully expecting the battle for a Champions League place to run until the end of the season.
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Tottenham travel to West Ham tonight - also knowing they are one point ahead of local rivals Arsenal back in fifth.
"It is very tight still," he told Sky Sports.
"Everton and Liverpool are still strong teams challenging, and Liverpool has played most of the big teams, and they have to play us and Chelsea.
"Arsenal are still a threat and finish the season strongly - but our hope is to continue doing our job, our team is committed to this and we get great satisfaction from seeing our players strive towards these results."
Meanwhile, Villas-Boas has revealed he makes little use of complex analysis of data in football, describing the process as "useless."
AVB will test his mettle against Sam Allardyce, a manager who pioneered use of the Prozone system during his time at Bolton.
But Villas-Boas prefers to focus on the psychology of his players to achieve results rather than relying on facts and figures.
"I have never used Prozone. I don't use it because I don't believe (in it)," he said.
"You always have to be very, very careful with statistics. It doesn't mean that we negate them completely; we just don't use them to the extent that people might think.
"We have a scientific department that deals with that but, we don't prepare our training or players based on the physical data we get from matches.
"The mind and how the player feels is much more important for us, rather than statistical data.
"For me it's useless, but it varies from coach to coach. We all have different approaches."
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