James Maddison reveals what he has noticed in Tottenham training for AZ Alkmaar Europa League tie

James Maddison has revealed the standard in Tottenham training has been "unbelievable" ahead of their season-defining game against AZ Alkmaar. Currently 13th in the Premier League table and eight points off the top half, the Europa League is Spurs' only chance of winning silverware this season after crashing out of the FA Cup and Carabao Cup.

Tottenham head into Thursday's game against AZ trailing 1-0 after defeat in the Netherlands last week. Ange Postecoglou's side were extremely poor in their loss at AFAS Stadion and only managed one shot on target across the 90 minutes.

Spurs fared slightly better against Bournemouth three days later and managed to come out of the game with a point after fighting back from a 2-0 deficit. Now going into a huge fixture in Tottenham's season, Maddison has opened up on finding his name in the headlines and what he has noticed on the training pitch prior to Thursdays' AZ encounter.

"Yeah but that's okay, I'd rather that than them talk about Archie [Gray] or Lucas [Bergvall]," he said when speaking in an interview with Sky Sports about if he feels he gets talked about a bit too much. "I don't mind taking the heat a little bit. I'm big enough and ugly enough now to take the hits and take the criticism because I know what I'm capable of, I know what I can do, I know my personal level and what people don't see is what we do behind the scenes and how much we're trying to improve and how much we work and it's very cheap to go and sit and talk and criticise.

"Training today, the standard was unbelievable and lads working really hard because we drew at home to Bournemouth, lads are not happy, so they don't see that it hurts us as well when we're not doing well in the league.

"I feel good, I actually feel pretty good, feel pretty sharp, really looking forward to Thursday and beyond, try and finish the season special as a team, try and finish the season strong personally, still have a really good season in terms of goals and assists and try and look for the positives and try and spread that through the dressing room instead of focusing on the negatives and the doom and gloom of the league position."

Maddison and his teammates are certainly well aware of just how big the Europa League clash against AZ Alkmaar is. "Yeah, we know what it means to us, the fans, everyone, we're all on the same page," he admitted.

"The first leg obviously wasn't good enough, tough conditions on a tough pitch to play the way we want to play, but it's only 1-0, they've got to come to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and if the fans get behind us and have the place rocking like we know they can."

On if that is a message to the fans, he replied: "No, I think they've been brilliant, especially in Europe as well, the midweek ones are tough in the middle of the week because people have lives and jobs and kids, I know all that, it doesn't go unappreciated and unnoticed. So just more of that, more of what we've seen in Europe so far.

"I remember the game we played against them [AZ Alkmaar] in the group stage. We were doing pretty well, I captained the side and the atmosphere was brilliant that night, we won 1-0. We're going to need more of that and we need to give them something to shout about and the lads are going to be up for it and we're going to start fast and hopefully we can get the job done."

Spurs' season-defining game and the big Archie Gray question - click here to listen to the latest episode of Gold & Guest Talk Tottenham.

Want breaking and top Tottenham stories sent straight to you? Join our Spurs WhatsApp community by clicking this link! If you're curious you can check out our privacy policy here.