My guide to derby day

By Martin Keown for the Daily Mail Updated: 21:53 EST, 14 January 2011

Martin Keown is well qualified to offer advice on derbies, having played in them for Arsenal, Everton, Aston Villa and Leicester. Here, Sportsmail’s columnist gives his top tips on how to deal with derby day.

STAY CALM

With all the pre-match hype and the venom from the fans, it is easy to lose your head. Playing at White Hart Lane in 1999 I was sent off at the death for a stupid tackle. But the fans were so loud because Tottenham were winning by that point that I felt I had to match their passion and got it wrong. I always found the north London derby the fiercest while the Merseyside fans seemed friendlier.

SEIZE CONTROL

You can set the tone in a derby with the first few tackles. If you win them it is a way of laying down a marker for the rest of the game. It can be quite fierce. I remember watching my first north London derby as a teenager in the youth team and seeing Charlie Nicholas get booted into the stands by Graham Roberts with the first tackle. It was ferocious. It had me licking my lips.

DON'T PLAY ON FAST FORWARD

Watching some derbies, it seems like they are being played in fast forward. I remember playing against Liverpool when they were the best team in the country. But on derby day, they seemed to panic and started hurrying everything and giving the ball away. It was a great leveller. So you should try to play at a normal pace.

TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY

Especially when I was at Aston Villa, we considered ourselves to be the bigger team when we played Birmingham. We were the big team in the area and even though we were in the old Second Division when I was there, we still tended to win. But even as the bigger club you can succumb to an upset, as I found when Birmingham beat us 2-0 at Villa Park in 1987. Your rivals are always going to be out to spoil your day.

ENJOY IT

Derbies are fantastic occasions; the epitome for me was the 2001 FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford. Robert Pires and Sylvain Wiltord came in from the warm-up with beaming smiles. Pires enjoyed playing against Spurs - in the Premier League era only Emmanuel Adebayor has scored as many goals in north London derbies as his eight.

AND DON'T FORGET TO WIN THE MATCH!

Derby day means everything to so many people around you: the kit man, the stewards, the other staff and, of course, the fans. So you have to make sure you win for all those people. I won most of my games when at Arsenal and Aston Villa but there was the odd defeat. It is huge: a win can kick-start your season - a defeat can ruin it.