James Maddison believes the Tottenham players dealt very poorly with the after effects of Brighton scoring a goal early in the second half on Sunday.
Spurs dominated their hosts at the Amex Stadium in the first half and went in at the break with a 2-0 lead thanks to goals from Brennan Johnson - making it six consecutive matches the 23-year-old has scored in - and an effort from Maddison. However, Tottenham collapsed in the second half, conceding an early goal to Yankuba Minteh and within 18 minutes had let in further goals from Georginio Rutter and Danny Welbeck.
After the final whistle, Spurs' disappointed vice-captain and goalscorer Maddison gave his thoughts on the display from Ange Postecoglou's side.
"A game of two halves - you couldn't get more of an obvious game of that phrase. The first half we were dominant and at two goals up in the second half we were really poor and didn't deal with the adversity of them scoring early very well," he said in his club interview.
"Well that's an understatement, we dealt with it very poorly I think. Just couldn't weather the storm, couldn't grind it out. They scored three goals from three attacks and we need to be more solid in that moment of adversity."
He added: "Being 2-0 up in the Premier League against any side is decent enough. We just weren't good enough in the second half. They scored early, which is always disappointing, but you've got to deal with it a lot better than what we did. It felt like we lost control of the game, the crowd got behind them like we knew they would if they scored, but we just didn't deal with the attacks.
"They got in too easy down the sides, we weren't aggressive enough. All of a sudden you find yourselves 3-2 down and a lot of work to do.
"It's not enough, 45 minutes in the Premier League. Teams are too good, there's too much quality. You can't just let off after 45 minutes and we've been punished for that."
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