Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho has turned with Tottenham Hotspur from a captain to win the championship titles to a coach looking to beat Arsenal, his sixth-place European Championship qualification.
Mourinho paved the way for the worse when he said last week that there was no problem in Tottenham leaving the first six, and after his victory over Arsenal he said it was a source of pride for the fans to finish the English Premier League soccer higher than Arsenal, but the club's goals should be greater .
And Toby Alderfield's goal was scored in the 81st minute with a header from Tottenham's 2-1 victory over Arsenal on Sunday, so Mourinho's team jumped to eighth, two points ahead of its rivals in North London with three games remaining at the end of the season.
While Tottenham are looking to end the season ahead of Arsenal for the fourth year in a row, Mourinho said after the match that this would not satisfy him "and I must have more ambition ... I do not want to see it as just a happy fan to beat Arsenal."
Tottenham can decide to qualify for the European League if he finished sixth and Mourinho said he was keen to participate in the second-level club competition in the continent, which won the title with Manchester United and Porto.
"It is not a tournament that I love or love playing a lot, but when you cannot play in the Champions League, you have to play in the European League," Mourinho added.
"And he continued in my entire career, I participated in the European League only twice, and I won it on both occasions. Playing it for the third time and winning it for the third time will not be bad."
On the other hand, Arsenal coach Mikel Artita said that his team had overstretched the north London summit points against its rival Tottenham and admitted that his hopes of securing a European seat were shrinking.
"We will continue to progress and I will try to encourage the players to move forward. There is little hope but we will fight until the goal is mathematically impossible," the Spanish coach added.