Unai Emery reveals main emotion ahead of huge clash with Spurs

The match is one of the biggest in Villa’s recent history with Emery’s men knowing victory would put them firmly in pole position for a top four Premier League finish with 10 matches remaining.

Villa currently hold a five-point cushion over the fifth-placed visitors, though the latter do have a match in hand and Emery yesterday described the showdown as a “key moment” for both teams.

His own players face a tight turnaround having only arrived back in the UK during the early hours of Friday morning after drawing 0-0 at Ajax in the Europa Conference League.

But Emery, as always, stressed the need for no excuses with the season now reaching a critical stage.

“When you want to get to a higher level as a club, a team and a coach, you have to understand you have to play a lot of matches,” he said.

“You have to get good performances from the players and be tactically too. We are in a key moment of the season, very much.

“We are going to face on Sunday an amazing match. I am very excited, happy.

“We are waiting for these moments, trying to focus on football, or improvements and being clinical in our decisions. As a coach, I am trying to focus 100 per cent for each match.”

Villa head into the match on a run of three straight league wins which have seen them play some impressive football but also experience some wobbly moments.

Five of their next six fixtures are against teams in the top-10 and Emery referenced recent home defeats to Newcastle and Manchester United when looking toward tomorrow’s game.

“We looked at those matches afterwards deeply, trying to understand why and how we can react. Sunday is a new challenge against Tottenham,” he said.

“As a coach for me it is an amazing time to prepare, to be with the players, have a little huddle with them and then have meetings about the match.

“We are going to face Tottenham, who are also having a good season. For them too it is a key moment. We have to play more matches after but now, for both teams, we can play for three, or six points. For me it is important we show our level.”

Villa were 2-1 winners in November’s reverse fixture but had with withstand a first half barrage, while Son Heung-min scored a hat-trick of offside goals for the hosts.

Asked for his assessment of opposite number, Ange Postecoglou, Emery replied: “His impact was fantastic. As a coach, trying to analyse and understand tactically how they are being successful and improving in the season, changing some issues.

“Maybe defensively taking a lot of man to man and holding the line high. How they are taking positions on the pitch with some players, trying to push our line with two players very wide. “This is the really challenging thing on Sunday, how we can stop them. We want to show our personality too, individually and collectively.”