Golden glove contender Brad Friedel is more concerned with keeping Aston Villa's Premier League points total moving than keeping clean sheets, reports the Birmingham Mail. Friedel is level with Chelsea's Petr Cech in the battle for the most shutouts, with both boasting a total of 11 so far this season.

"The real sense of pride is winning football matches," said Friedel. "The stats of it doesn't come into play so much for us. We want to win football matches.

"When you can't win a football match then you don't want to lose it. You have to take the next best thing and at Tottenham we got the next best thing."

And the former Liverpool and Blackburn stopper believes the entire team deserve credit for Villa's defensive meanness.

"Clean sheets are collective," added Friedel. "It's not down to goalkeepers. It's collective defending.

"Just look at the amount of times in the first half at Tottenham that we stopped service at source.

"We've got people like John Carew, Emile Heskey and Gabby Agbonlahor helping to do that and it sometimes goes unnoticed at times during the game.

"But myself and the back four, we definitely take notice because it's one less time you have to deal with 6ft 9in Peter Crouch and one less time you have Jermain Defoe getting the second ball off him.

"We appreciate it when strikers and midfielders stop it at source and we have something instilled in our team where everybody is willing to do that."