Benoit Assou-Ekotto has no fears about losing his place in Tottenham's first team after he made his return from a four-month injury lay-off in yesterday's FA Cup win over Coventry.
Jan Vertonghen and Kyle Naughton have impressed at left-back since Assou-Ekotto injured his knee back in September, while Spurs have also recently added highly-rated full-back Zeki Fryers to their squad. But the Cameroon defender insists he will make the position his own once again.
"It's not a problem," Assou-Ekotto said when asked about competition for his position.
"When I came here six years ago I was in competition with Gilberto, Lee Young-Pyo and Gareth Bale and it ended up being my place (in the team) so it's not a problem."
Assou-Ekotto's return brought the best out of Bale on Saturday as the Welshman combined well his team-mate to wreak havoc down the left flank.
Assou-Ekotto had only expected to be out for a few weeks when he suffered the injury in September, but the problem was worse than feared and surgery was considered to clean out a bone fragment in his knee.
Coventry arrived at White Hart Lane on Saturday looking to pull off a repeat of their heroic 1987 FA Cup final win over Spurs, but Spurs took control comfortably and won 3-0.
Tottenham were always big favourites to beat their League One opponents, but assistant manager Steffen Freund was pleased with his side's professionalism.
"When you are 3-0 up at half-time, the opposition has nothing to lose, they will come out and try and score a goal," Freund said.
"We kept a clean sheet as well and it wasn't easy. Coventry are strong away, they have a good away record of seven wins in the league so to keep a clean sheet in the second half was good for us."
Source: PA
