King: Sunderland were priority, now for Chelsea

Tottenham captain Ledley King said they were not distracted by Thursday’s game with Chelsea when they played Sunderland.

A crisp low drive from Roman Pavlyuchenko was enough to secure a well-earned 1-0 victory against Martin O’Neill’s side on Sunday, despite Spurs not turning in their usual free-flowing performance on home turf.

Despite Andre Villas-Boas’ men set to visit White Hart Lane this week, in what could be a telling fixture in the race for Champions League qualification, King has insisted that the Sunderland game took priority.

“We knew Sunderland would come and make it hard for us and from our point of view it was important we looked at that game and not the big one against Chelsea that everyone is talking about,” King told the club website.

“We had business to take care of and it was a tough game but we were delighted to come through with the three points.”

“It was important to get back to winning ways at home where we are always difficult to beat, we did that and now we can look to the next game.”

“The longer the game goes on you wonder if that goal is going to come. Once we got that goal we were confident we could hold on to what we had.”

“We didn’t add to the scoreline but we kept it pretty solid from then on and although 1-0 is always a tricky scoreline, we did well.”