‘I was hard man of the North London Derby – I tried to nail two Arsenal stars’

Former Tottenham midfielder Tim Sherwood says he had it out for two Arsenal stars whenever the North London Derby rolled around.

Sherwood spent five years at Spurs as a player and only managed to win one match against the Gunners in nine attempts. That period (1998-2003) was a particularly strong one for Arsene Wenger's side – which boasted the likes of Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp and David Seaman.

As such, Sherwood said Tottenham were under no illusions as to who was top dog in north London. He also revealed that he and his team-mates had to get a little devious to try and level the playing field.

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Speaking at a Sky Sports filming day ahead of the Solheim Cup, and the Ryder Cup, the 54-year-old said he used to amp up the aggression on derby day and claimed his favourite targets were his midfield counterparts Vieira and Emmanuel Petit.

"They were better than us, it was a technical mismatch when we played them," he said. "So we had to try and find another edge and that was that we tried to be aggressive as soon as we came out into the tunnel with verbals and try and intimidate them.

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"Patrick would just look straight ahead and ignore me, but I’d sometimes get a little bite out of Petit, but Patrick would just tell him to ignore that idiot, which was me. He was obviously a fantastic and very successful player, and no matter how you played against that Arsenal side at the time, they would find a way – they were a good footballing side, but if you wanted to have a fight against them, they were big and strong and could do that as well."

After falling out with Spurs boss Glenn Hoddle in 2002, Sherwood left for Portsmouth before ending his playing career after a stint with Coventry. He returned to Tottenham in 2008, initially as an assistant manager to Harry Redknapp, but was appointed technical director in 2012.

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A year later he took over as first team manager following Andre Villas-Boas' mid-season departure, but was sacked at the end of the campaign after a disappointing stint at the helm. 10 months later he joined Aston Villa, and took them to the FA Cup final just a few weeks into the job. But was sacked again little over a month into the following campaign and losing six matches in a row.

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