Van Gerwen discusses barren title run: "The only person I could talk to who has been in this position is Phil Taylor"

Michael van Gerwen goes into this weekend's Nordic Darts Masters without a title of any kind for nearly a year stretching back to the Players Championship Finals last November.

Van Gerwen made an initial step towards arresting that bad run of form by seeing off Darius Labanauskas with a two leg run seeing him through.

"Darius was on my nerves constantly. We all know Darius is a really good player and on his day he can beat anyone so you need to have a lot of respect towards him but in the other side you also need to work on your own game and I think I made it unnecessarily difficult but everyone knows where I come from," said Van Gerwen post match.

"I think my scoring power was quite well and with the crowd behind me, it was absolutely amazing."

He also discussed his barren run and said that it's difficult as no-one knows what he is going through barring Phil Taylor.

"It takes a lot of work and a lot of winning games to get back in your own comfort zone. Things aren't easy for me because no-one in this field tonight knows what I'm going through. I can't really talk with people about it, The only person I could talk to who has been in this position is Phil Taylor."