There wasn’t much good news for Spurs after a drearily passive performance in their Europa League last-16 first-leg defeat to AZ Alkmaar.
But things could certainly have been worse. Spurs are only 1-0 down ahead of the return leg at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, while Ange Postecoglou has also issued a hopeful update on Dominic Solanke, who hobbled off looking in some discomfort barely 15 minutes after coming off the bench to make his first appearance since the North London Derby defeat to Arsenal on January 15.
Postecoglou told TNT Sport: “We think it’s a knock, so hopefully nothing too bad. He’s a bit sore.”
That was about the end of the positives, though, with Postecoglou conceding Spurs’ performance level was nowhere near that expected or required in a competition that offers genuine hope of salvaging what has been a season of struggle for club and manager alike with Tottenham languishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table.
“Yeah, it wasn’t great from us tonight,” he said.
“Pretty much all facets of the game. We didn’t really get to grips with any part of the game.
“We struggled to gain any momentum with the ball, we weren’t as aggressive as we needed to be without the ball.
“It was a tricky surface but having said that we kind of knew that from yesterday and yeah we just didn’t tackle the challenges we head out there in a real positive way. That allowed AZ to get into a rhythm, which when you’re playing away from home, it is difficult to stem the tide.”
Postecoglou was unimpressed with Spurs’ response to the early setback of falling behind to a Lucas Bergvall own goal, and questioned the ‘mindset’ of his players.
He said: “I don’t think it’s a matter of effort or attitude. I don’t think it is going out there and not trying, but like I said we didn’t really come to grips and have the right mindset to tackle an away fixture in Europe.
“It is always tough and we obviously conceded the goal, which was a disappointing set of events but even after that we didn’t really settle down into the game at all.
“You are going to face some pressure when you play away from home in Europe and weather the storm and get to grips with it, but we never really did so that was a disappointment.”
Spurs get the chance to put things right in next Thursday’s second leg on home turf, and will perhaps take heart from AZ’s mediocre away record in the league phase, where they picked up just one point from their four games on the road.
One of the three defeats they suffered came at Spurs, who now need at least a repeat of that 1-0 win to keep the tie alive.