The Tottenham defender on Antonio Conte's gruelling training regime, the highs of the Pochettino era, and what has gone wrong since...
theathletic.com
Has anyone at Tottenham benefitted as much from Antonio Conte’s arrival as Ben Davies?
From peripheral, second-choice left-back under Nuno Espirito Santo, Davies has slotted in perfectly to the left-sided centre-back role, and is clearly relishing being a regular starter again and the new head coach’s punishing training regime.
“I’m buzzing,” he tells
The Athletic as we sit down in a suite at the
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to discuss a new era and a “tumultuous” seven and a half years at Spurs that have taken in the highs of the Mauricio Pochettino era to the lows of the more recent past. So ingrained in the club is Davies that his tally of 240 Tottenham appearances is beaten only by
Harry Kane,
Hugo Lloris,
Dele Alli and
Eric Dier from the current squad. After so many departures, he is one of the great survivors.
It seems strange to think that Davies is still only 28 given his experience, and how from pretty much the moment he broke into the Swansea team as a teenager he had the feel of a
James Milner-style fully-formed professional. Perhaps that’s why he is sometimes taken for granted by supporters, but adored by his many managers.
And with the latest managerial change, it feels as though Davies’ Spurs career has been given a second wind. Over the course of a wide-ranging interview, Davies explains how refreshing Conte’s arrival has been — “We’re enjoying the hard work and I think we’ve needed it, missed it. It’s what we want” — and tries to make sense of the last few years. He admits to regrets at not winning a trophy under Pochettino, and cites the 1-0 home loss to
Leicester City in the 2015-16 season as one of the games he thinks about what might have been. Then there was the “comedown” after the
Champions League final defeat by
Liverpool in 2019 and the subsequent decline that Davies feels he’ll only be able to make sense of in 10 or so years’ time.
He also expresses sympathy for the challenges Jose Mourinho faced, while on Nuno he admits that the decision to leave 11 players at home for the Europa Conference League against Vitesse Arnhem was “tough”. “It does give you that feeling of you’re a B team travelling for the game… I’m not somebody who’s going to struggle with motivation but maybe some players do.”
Of the current team, Davies rejects the idea that Spurs lack leaders, says they must take responsibility for the frequent managerial changes and believes that they can achieve something special this season.
Away from football, Davies has a range of interests and, with typical modesty, sheepishly reveals publicly for the first time — more than a year after finishing it — that he has completed a business and economics degree at the Open University, achieving a 2:1. He also explains, fittingly as we’re speaking at an event centred on Spurs’ sustainability activities, why he drives an electric car.
And as he settles into his chair fresh from a gruelling training session that morning ahead of Thursday’s match against
Brentford, we’re given an insight into one of the most eventful periods in the club’s history — and as Spurs prepare to try to close the gap to the top four tonight, what we should expect to happen next.
To give a sense of how much Conte has already changed at Spurs in his four weeks in charge, the players’ fitness feels like the best place to start.
Tottenham’s running stats were the worst in the
Premier League under Nuno, and that was something Conte wanted to address instantly. He has overseen some exhausting but rewarding changes, which have already seen Spurs outrun Marcelo Bielsa’s notoriously indefatigable
Leeds United.
“It’s very tough but it’s what we need,” Davies says, physically drained from training but with the satisfied look that comes from pushing yourself to the limit. “We want to be as competitive as we can and physicality is definitely an area where we need to improve. Our stats weren’t great at the start of the season. Now there’s a new boss who’s really got us running, really got us working. We’re intense and we feel much better for it.
“It was one of his main messages when he came in. We knew we needed to improve and his attitude is we have to be the best in the aspects that we can control, and physicality is definitely something we can control.
“We’re covering a much greater distance in training, and there are a number of markers the sports scientists look for — be it high intensity, running, sprint distance, getting your heart rate above 85 per cent. All these numbers are what you need to do on the training pitch to improve and be in tip-top shape when it comes to match day, and the training is set up for us to reach those numbers. If that includes a little top up, a little bit of extra running at the beginning or end of a session, then we’ve done that.”
Reports from Hotspur Way soon after Conte’s arrival were of players satisfyingly saying they felt “dead” and looking as though they’d run a marathon. Davies laughs and says he was “quite lucky” to miss Conte’s first full couple of weeks because of being away with Wales on international duty.
“The boys had some really gruelling sessions,” he says. “A few videos came through of how they were feeling but actually we realised we were missing it. As professional athletes we got to where we are by working hard, so getting that standard back is where we want to be. We’re enjoying the hard work. Everybody wants that feeling of competitiveness, the sense that they’re always improving.”
After losing the physical edge that had been the hallmark of Pochettino’s team, does it feel like a return to the days when the Argentine manager made Spurs the fittest team in England?
“Yeah in some aspects,” Davies says. “It’s obviously different ways of going about it, but that demand of being intense — that for 90 minutes we’re going to try and run all over the opposition is definitely there.
“It’s intense training every day, it’s short, sharp movements. All the details are covered, whether it’s body position, foot movement, sprinting techniques. It’s very detailed and at the elite level you need all those aspects to try to get those one per centers over people.”
Other “one per centers” have included changes to the players’ diet and advice over sleep patterns. The ban on ketchup, which
The Athletic revealed earlier this month, has been the headline alteration, and Davies says there’s been a very clear message about the importance of “eating clean”. Other options like creamy carbonara have been taken off the menu. Conte has also stressed the importance of sleeping well, something he mentioned in a press conference two weeks ago. “If you want to train well the next day, you’re going to need to eat right, you’re going to need to sleep right,” Davies says.
Conte’s arrival has been an eye-opener tactically as well. “The training’s very detailed, it’s very clear what he expects,” Davies says. “Everything we do positionally is based on what’s been done on the training pitch. He’s meticulous, a real worker on the details and I like that. I want to learn from the best and having someone that can make the game as clear as possible for you, it’s a dream.
“Everybody’s roles are very clear now. The work we do in the week makes that pretty easy when you get out onto the pitch. Every detail — and I mean every detail — is covered. We’re on the training pitch for a long time, but it’s for a reason. We’re not just playing games and doing it for nothing. If the ball is here, we will press here. If the ball is there, we know where to be. We know most situations we can expect to come up against. And having that clarity is really beneficial.”
In July 2020, Davies said that Spurs were “more tactical” under Mourinho than Pochettino, but with the passing of time, and with Conte’s arrival, he slightly revises that view.
“We didn’t have long sessions where Pochettino would say, ‘I want this here, this here, this here’, but the training and the work we did was actually all done for us to be in the right place,” Davies says. “It’s tactics but without calling it tactics. Whereas the sessions now, we do a lot of 11 v 11 shape. A lot of simulations of what we’d expect to see.”
One simulation that we’ve become accustomed to seeing in matches under Conte is Davies galloping forward to join attacks. One such burst in the Italian’s first match in charge saw a cross-shot ending up in an own goal to put Spurs 3-0 up against Vitesse. And it was clear to those watching that this was one of Conte’s many attacking plans rather than the famously diligent Davies suddenly going rogue. “The license is there to join in the attacks, and while the positions are set on the pitch and that’s your basic position, if you can move the opposition around and if that’s me stepping into the next line then it can definitely be beneficial to the way we want to play,” he explains.
This greater licence to get forward is one of many reasons Davies is so enjoying playing for Conte. “From the first day, it was straight into 11 v 11 and he wanted me to be in that left centre-back role, and that was exactly where I wanted to be. I’m not daft, I knew he likes to play this system, and I think that position suits me down to the ground.”
Davies and the Spurs players have also been given a quick introduction to Conte’s inspiring half-time team talks, with his instructions at the interval of their last league game helping to turn a 1-0 deficit against Leeds into a 2-1 win. “We were expecting fireworks but it was really good. It was a very clear plan of what was expected and we executed it much better in the second half. It definitely bodes well to have that confidence in a manager that can tell you this is what I want this half, and then it works.
“I think going into the game, the manager was perhaps a bit unsure whether we could compete at that level physically because of what the stats showed about facing a team like Leeds. But in the second half we outran them, we pressed better, we were much more organised. We were much more clear in our press and followed what the manager told us to do in that second half.”
As we speak, Davies’ passion for football and Spurs are evident. But he is someone who also has a number of interests outside the sport.
He is known in the dressing room for his intelligence, and his revelation about his economics degree comes after a reference to the book Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski in relation to why Mourinho’s more cautious approach should not be dismissed. He is currently reading Sheelah Kolhatkar’s Black Edge, about the billionaire Steven A. Cohen, whose hedge fund SAC Capital was subject to the largest-ever insider trading investigation. “I just saw it in the shop and got it,” Davies says matter-of-factly. “I’m a bookworm.”
For his economics degree, Davies’ dissertation was on statistics, and despite being asked he declined to talk about it on last year’s Amazon Prime All or Nothing documentary as he didn’t want to jinx it before he completed the course. He’s not someone who courts the limelight, but hearing Davies talk about his course and dissertation, it’s easy to imagine him one day becoming an executive or manager.
He also has a social conscience and drives a Tesla, bought after his partner Emily pointed out that he was “always preaching about the environment”. Spurs have charging points at their training ground, and team-mate Eric Dier drives a hybrid car.
Dier is one of Davies’ closest friends at the club, along with Son Heung-min and fellow member of his “Welsh crew”
Joe Rodon. Gareth Bale was another in that group last season, and Davies grins broadly at the memory of having his great friend and long-time Wales team-mate with him at Spurs for a year: “Gaz is a big character. He’s a very funny guy — I see him as a mate more than the world-class footballer that he is.
“It was really fun (having him at Spurs last season). He’s such a big character — very quirky in his own way. It’s been a pleasure every time I’ve taken the pitch with him because you’re just waiting for him to do something special. He does special things that I haven’t seen many other people do.”
Of others who have departed, Davies cites
Christian Eriksen as one of those he still holds a special bond with (incidentally Davies lived in Denmark for three years as a youngster). Eriksen is
currently recovering from the cardiac arrest he suffered while playing for Denmark at Euro 2020 in June, and he and Davies speak regularly. “I’m very close with Christian still, and he’s in good spirits,” Davies says. “He’s still in the recovery process but he’s in a good place. He’s got his family around him, he’s got his two kids and he’s healthy. The main thing right now is that he’s going to be fine.”
Memories of Eriksen inevitably lead to reflections on the great Pochettino team that achieved pretty much everything but lift a trophy. And Eriksen, along with Mousa Dembele, is probably the player the team miss most from that era.
“For all the plaudits that he gets, I still think Christian’s underrated,” Davies says. “I think what he brings to a team, he was like a controller, a dictator on the pitch. He could slow the tempo, speed up the tempo. I know he gets some stick at times for not, maybe tackling or running or looking like it but he did run, it just wasn’t always obvious.
“He controlled space so well. He was a real pleasure to play with.”
As for Dembele, Davies’ eyes widen as he says: “A special player. Someone when the ball was at his feet, it was like nothing I’ve seen. He could keep it at will. Teams would press us and he would get the ball off Hugo under pressure and turn and run past someone. You could just roll the ball to him and he’d always get you out of trouble — he made it look so easy.
“He could really take us up a pitch and keep us in the opposition half all game. That was what we did in that period where we were really dominant, and there would be games when I’d have maybe two defensive actions the whole game. The rest were up in the opposition half and you could look to him to drive out and get the ball to you. Just an awesome player.”
Davies, though less eye-catching than stars like Dembele and Eriksen, was a key part of that Pochettino team. Often seen as an understudy for
Danny Rose, Davies actually made comfortably more appearances in their five and a half seasons together (and that doesn’t include last season when Rose was technically at the club but training with the under-23s).
With Rose injured, it was Davies who started Spurs’ last 16 Premier League games (13 of which were wins) of the 2016-17 season when they finished second with 86 points and produced their consistently best level of performance in the modern era.
But, as with the previous season when Leicester City beat them to the title, Spurs finished the campaign empty-handed. So how does Davies, who joined Spurs the same summer as Pochettino, view that period?
“Even at the start when results weren’t great you could see that we were building something and soon enough it clicked and we had an identity,” he says. “We had a clear way of playing; an intensity about us that was a pleasure to play in. You were going into games really not even thinking about the opposition because you felt you were going to win. It was a real pleasure and I look back on it with a lot of fondness.”
There’s also regret that the team didn’t win anything. The memories of that 1-0 home defeat by Leicester in January 2016 and the failure to reel in
Chelsea the following season are still vivid.
“Leicester at White Hart Lane,” Davies recalls. “That’s the one I look back on and think if we’d won that game things might’ve been a bit different just because the gap after that (seven points) meant they were always that one step away.
“At the time people were like, ‘Oh they’re not going to be able to keep this up’. When they beat us we were like, ‘Oh… they’re in the mix now. OK (exhales) this is a serious contender’.
“We were right on their tails for a long time and then it just faded away at the end. We got close, but it was really a period of being very close and there is that feeling of a couple of games where things could’ve been completely different.
“We were always chasing so it was really frustrating that season. It was similar the next year when we were right behind Chelsea and they seemed to keep sneaking in 1-0s and 2-1s and we were out there destroying teams, smashing them, and on a crazy run (nine Premier League wins in a row, 12 from 13). We were so close but it never seemed to get any closer. We kept winning games but we were gutted that we never closed the gap.”
Chelsea’s manager that season was, of course, Spurs’ current head coach Conte. “Yeah I haven’t brought that one up,” Davies says, smiling.
From the highs of the Pochettino era, during which time Davies also reached the Euro 2016 semi-finals with Wales, came the lows of the last few years.
The Champions League defeat by Liverpool in June 2019 was the culmination of everything Spurs had worked towards, but it also marked the beginning of the end for Pochettino and that team. Results fell away at the start of the following season, and the manager was sacked five months later.
“Yeah I think comedown is probably the right word to use,” Davies says, reflecting on the weeks and months that followed the Liverpool defeat. “It was tough. I think it was… I can’t put my finger on it. It’s something I’ll probably have to look at in 10 years’ time. Since then it has been pretty tumultuous. A lot of change in managers, we had COVID, we had the full shebang. Hopefully we’re on the other side of it now.”
The “whole shebang” included Mourinho’s tempestuous 17 months in charge, which ended with his sacking in April. Mourinho was a huge admirer of Davies and praised him publicly on a number of occasions, but he clashed with some of the players and was criticised for his tactics.
“I had nothing but respect for him and I felt like we had a really good relationship,” Davies says. “Football can be a game of small margins and the number of times it felt like we were ahead and then we conceded in the 80th minute or later was tough. If we’d nicked a couple of wins instead of draws, to add to that momentum when we were in a good place in November-ish (when Spurs were top), we could’ve really kicked on.
“I can understand the frustrations perhaps of the football that was being played, that it was defensive. But at the same time I can understand that approach and I think it’s worked in the past for many managers.” Davies here cites Soccernomics and its discussion of the relative value of clean sheets compared to goals.
As for Mourinho’s approach compared to Pochettino and Conte, Davies says: “Mourinho’s very detail-oriented. He was very much focused on how we were going to prepare against individual opposition and that would change regularly. It was probably a lot more low intensity during the week, with the idea to save your energy for the game.”
After Mourinho’s sacking and the interim period of Ryan Mason came Nuno’s four-month reign. Results and performances were largely bad, and a key moment came in his penultimate week in charge when he decided to leave behind all 11 of his starters from the previous Premier League game for the Europa Conference League trip to Vitesse Arnhem. It created the sense of a two-tiered squad, and suggested those players selected in the Netherlands had little chance of breaking into the Premier League team for the next match.
Davies, who only started once in the league under Nuno (his last as Tottenham manager against
Manchester United), says: “Yeah that Vitesse one was tough — I was part of the players that played in that game and travelling as a squad of 11… it’s not easy. It does give you that feeling of you’re a B team travelling for the game. And for Tottenham Hotspur, for me it’s always an important game. It doesn’t matter if it’s the third round of the FA Cup, League Cup, whatever, you’re representing the club and you’re there.
“I’m not somebody who’s going to struggle with motivation but maybe some players do. Especially in those kinds of games, it’s not necessarily easy. If you’re not prepared, you can’t turn up at 80 per cent against these teams and that night it showed. It was a tough night. It was very disappointing and it hurt.”
Davies says nobody confronted Nuno about the decision but that the mood was “crap” on the way home. A week later the mood at the Tottenham Hotspur was even darker, as Spurs fans turned on Nuno, chairman Daniel Levy and the players as the team slumped to a dismal 3-0 home defeat by Manchester United. Davies, who started the game at left-back, describes the visceral fan reaction as “definitely” one of his toughest moments at the club. “I understood the frustrations,” he says. “Those defeats hurt a lot. We don’t go home and forget about them and think, ‘Oh it was the manager’s decisions’. You go home and it’s on your mind until that next game when you can try and rectify it. It was a very flat place the day after that game.”
Nuno was sacked two days after the defeat, and Conte’s subsequent appointment made it four permanent Spurs head coaches in less than two years.
How does Davies feel about accusations that the players need to take more responsibility for the frequent changes of head coach? “Yeah it’s our responsibility,” he says. “You can think what you want about a manager’s performance but it comes down to players on the pitch. And as players, it hurts. You don’t want to be responsible for somebody losing their job.”
On the suggestion that Spurs have lacked leaders during his time at the club, Davies says: “Personally I think there are (leaders) and I feel like it’s a criticism that can be thrown at a team if you don’t win something. But we’ve got big characters in the team. We’ve got people who are not afraid to say how they think to each other’s face.
“There’s a good bunch of us, especially those who’ve been there a long time, myself included. We’re desperate to win something, and hopefully we can show that.”
