Ange Postecoglou says that Tottenham Hotspur’s defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion before the October international break was a “good lesson” that they need to “stick to their core principles”.
Spurs were leading 2-0 thanks to goals from James Maddison and Brennan Johnson but they conceded three times in 20 minutes straight after half-time to suffer their third defeat in the Premier League this season. Afterwards, Postecoglou told Sky Sports he was “absolutely gutted” and “that is probably the worst defeat we’ve had since I’ve been here”.
In an interview with Australian broadcaster Optus Sport earlier this week, Postecoglou said he was “ready to explode” at the players when they returned from international duty. At his press conference on Friday, before their game against West Ham United this Saturday, Postecoglou spoke about how his meeting with the squad was “as much therapy as anything else”.
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“The emotion of what you are feeling straight after the game has dissipated 10 days later but obviously it is important the players get the appropriate feedback for what was a real sort of difficult game for us,” Postecoglou said. “As well as we did in the first half, we were really poor in the second half.
“We were passive with and without the ball. We lacked real conviction and courage in everything we did. It was almost like we felt like we had done enough. I hadn’t seen that before in us and it is a good lesson for the whole group that you need to make sure, irrespective of how a game is going, you stick to the core principles of your football. It is a timely reminder for us, particularly in any game of football and really in the first half we should have finished them off, when you don’t it is very easy for momentum to shift.”
Tottenham’s loss to Brighton meant they became the first team in Premier League history to lose 10 times after leading by two or more goals but Postecoglou called the statistic “irrelevant”.
“Who cares?,” the 59-year-old said. “It doesn’t matter. You say it’s 10 times but it hasn’t been 10 times with me so give me a break. Let me get to 10 and then start putting tags on but you have to accept that, right? People will always find easy kind of ways to if you’ve got a wound, to stick their finger in that wound and if you’re not prepared to accept that when things haven’t gone well, make sure things go well. There is one way to change that. If we want to change the perception of ourselves, it will not come because of, ‘please don’t call us those names,’ it will come because we’re proving we’re a team that can be relentless in our approach and be successful.”
(Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)