Mousa Dembele insists Tottenham should not be scared when they travel to Manchester United tomorrow.
The initial scepticism that followed Tim Sherwood’s appointment as manager has started to wane slightly.
Sherwood made it seven points out of a possible nine in the Premier League on Sunday when he led Tottenham to a comfortable 3-0 win over Stoke City.
Next up for the new Spurs boss is a difficult trip to Old Trafford to face a United team that are on a six-match winning streak under David Moyes.
But Dembele remembers how Spurs defied the odds to claim a historic win at Old Trafford last season and the Belgian sees no reason why Tottenham cannot do the same again.
“I am not scared to go there,” the Tottenham midfielder said. “They are a top team. We have a lot of respect for them of course, but we have a very good team too.
“We can’t have too much respect. We have to play our own game. We can do something there, why not?
“I have good memories of playing there. We had a good game there with Fulham and last year we won.
“The Stoke game was an important one for us. To win at home gives us confidence again. We can take confidence from this game to the next one. We showed we are a good team.”
Dembele is one of the players that has benefited most from Sherwood’s arrival at White Hart Lane.
He has played three out of the four games in which Sherwood has been in the dugout and been allowed to get forward more thanks to the new manager’s desire to play attacking football.
It has been suggested that Sherwood’s attacking philosophy will be his undoing at United, but Dembele denies that the defensive side of the team has been overlooked.
“For us it’s not a long time he has been with us, but he has made some adjustments,” Dembele said. “He has talked to us a lot. He gives us confidence as well to play our own game, to try to attack.
“We are playing in an attacking way, but we make sure as well that we are organised so that is important. You can’t attack all the time. He explained that and he trains us to be organised too.”
