Ange Postecoglou was naturally disappointed to lose but picked out the positives after our narrow 1-0 loss against Manchester City in the Premier League on Wednesday night.
City had the better of the first half at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, created chances and scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game through Erling Haaland after 12 minutes.
Kicking-off on the back of three straight league wins, we started to get into the game towards the end of the first half and kicked fully into gear after the break, pushing City back and creating chances of our own - Wilson Odobert was inches from converting Brennan Johnson’s cross, Rodrigo Bentancur's header flew straight at Edersen, who later denied Heung-Min Son before Pape Matar Sarr headed just over in a dramatic end to the game, seconds after Haaland had a second goal disallowed for handball.
Ultimately, it wasn’t to be though, and Ange was left to reflect on two very different halves when he spoke to our Review Show afterwards. “First half, I think there was some over-eagerness, especially with the ball,” he said. “I just thought we were really wasteful and allowed City to get a bit of a rhythm, and you know when they do that, they can pick you off.
“They created some good chances, but we hung in there, which was the most important thing... it was only 1-0 at half time. In the second half, we just calmed down a little with the ball and were really relentless without it. I thought we dominated the whole second half, played in their half, created chances, but obviously missing the goal and disappointed to lose.”
Ange on if his second half changes gave the team impetus, or were we already on top?
“It certainly helped us kick on, you know, the energy and quality they brought certainly helped us go to another level, but I thought we were on top before then. I thought right from the start of the second half, we got a good grip on the game. We were just missing that final action at times.”
Ange on the overriding feeling after that second half...
“Like I said, we were just missing that final action, but we were just a lot of calmer, a lot more clear headed in our movements and what we needed to do. I just thought in the first half we were too eager to try and go and hurt City and we kind of paid the price for that, so there's some learnings in there for us, but look, it's disappointing to lose, gutted to lose, but at least the performance looked more like the way we want to be, the team we can be and we’ve just got to take that into the next game (our UEFA Europa League Round of 16 first leg at AZ Alkmaar next Thursday, 6 March).”