Ange Postecoglou said his Tottenham side was ‘nowhere near good enough’ in their 2-1 defeat to Arsenal on Wednesday night.
Spurs took the lead in the first half through a deflected Son Heung-min strike, but that came against the run of play and the Gunners were ahead before the interval.
Dominic Solanke was unfortunate to score an own goal on 40 minutes, with a Gabriel header from a corner flicking off the striker and into the net.
Four minutes later Leandro Trossard put Arsenal ahead and that’s where they remained until the final whistle.
Postecoglou rolled the dice as early as half-time, putting on James Maddison and Brennan Johnson for Pape Sarr and Yves Bissouma to unleash an all-out-attack formation.
Tottenham improved in that set-up, but still couldn’t produce much cutting edge and Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya was rarely troubled.
After an 11th defeat of the Premier League season, the Spurs boss was fuming with the ‘unacceptable’ performance of his side.
‘Nowhere near good enough, especially in the first half,’ the Australian told TNT Sports. ‘We were too passive. We allowed Arsenal to dictate the game. We hung in there but that’s all we were doing. Second half was a little better not nowhere near good enough. Unacceptable.
‘Ultimately I guess the responsibility lies with me and how we prepare the players. Their mindset going out there certainly wasn’t our intent when we started the game. Like I said the second half was a little bit better, but certainly the first half nowhere near the standard we want to set.
‘I’m interested in how we play our football and we were not anywhere near the levels today.’
With Tottenham left 13th in the Premier League table after the latest defeat, Postecoglou was asked for his plans ahead of a trip to Everton on Sunday.
‘No choice. Go back to work and prepare for a tough game,’ he said. ‘Of course they [defeats] hurt me. Not acceptable. Too many losses this year. Too many games we’ve let get away from us. It needs to stop.
‘No other way of looking at it. If you give up now, there’s no point, but it needs to stop. Right now we have a big game against Everton this weekend. That’s our focus, we’ll look what happens beyond then after that.’
Gunners boss Mikel Arteta was in wildly contrasting mood, thrilled by the performance of his players in a win which puts them within four points of league-leaders Liverpool.
‘Outstanding today. From the first minute we were really at it, really intense. We played with a real purpose to hurt them. We created an unbelievable atmosphere,’ he said.
‘We know how important the game is. It’s a gift we can make the supporters very happy.
‘The attitude we played with, not feeling sorry for ourselves, was phenomenal.’
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