The manager of Tottenham Hotspur has been talking about the matchup with Manchester City and how his squad needs to close the gap in order to compete in future seasons.

As Tottenham gets ready to play Manchester City in a Premier League match that will have a major impact on Arsenal, Ange Postecoglou has made it clear that if you’re a successful team, you don’t display images of bragging rights on the wall.

Tuesday night, Spurs will host Pep Guardiola’s team at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. A victory by City would put the visitors one step closer to winning the Premier League trophy for the fourth consecutive year, while a victory by Spurs would give their local rivals Arsenal the upper hand on the final day.

Postecoglou’s team would qualify for the Champions League if they won two of their remaining games and Aston Villa lost their final match at Crystal Palace. However, a significant portion of Spurs supporters would be content if their team lost this game to keep their local rivals from winning the championship. Postecoglou claims that his goals go beyond just making Arsenal fans unhappy.

“I guess there have been years where Tottenham has had bragging rights over the past 16 years [since the team last won a trophy]. There is nothing to brag about in the hallways, buddy. Go through them. Nothing exists.

The Australian claimed, “The players are not depicted in the wall photos holding a large placard that reads, ‘We’ve got bragging rights.

“All they have are photos of Bill Nicholson and real success stories. I’m trying to get us there. It’s funny how having prizes usually gives you the licence to brag. All I want to do is make sure we maintain our obvious focus and discipline. It would be simple for me to argue that the most crucial thing is to outshine your competitors.

“We can’t succeed if that’s our aim, but you could accomplish it and not win anything, and I would feel fantastic about myself and maybe the supporters would too.

Trophy wins are what I define as success, therefore until we accomplish that, we must maintain a laser-like focus on our goals.”

Postecoglou is looking forward to another thrilling encounter between Tottenham and a major Premier League team.

“If you look at the top three and our games against them, they’ve all been crackers and we’ve ended up on the winning side only once but we’ve taken it to them,” he stated. “We were completely outclassed in the first hour of the match against Arsenal, City, and Liverpool, but we persevered until the very end and created a thrilling outcome.”

“I believe the mentality we’ve adopted going into those games—to not back down from the challenge—is what’s most telling. It’s not hard to go in there and try to keep things tight, try to earn a draw, or even win 1-0. Even in the Arsenal game, we were pushing towards the end. When you go out there and try to meet them by playing your own football, I believe it reveals where you’re at. Obviously, we haven’t mastered that aspect of it yet. However, if we keep getting better, we might be able to defeat them eventually.”