Tottenham Hotspur went from the sublime to the ridiculous on Sunday at Brighton as they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Spurs managed to turn a 2-0 win into a 3-2 defeat in the Premier League match at the Amex Stadium as goals from Brennan Johnson and James Maddison were cancelled out in the second half by efforts from Yankuba Minteh, Georginio Rutter and Danny Welbeck amid mistakes aplenty at the back from the Tottenham defence.
Ange Postecoglou was furious with his Spurs players after the game and made it very clear that they did not provide the basic competitiveness required in the second half in winning their duels. He also played down suggestions that he had waited too long before making substitutions in the game.
In the latest episode of their podcast Gold & Guest Talk Tottenham, our Spurs correspondents Alasdair Gold and Rob Guest discussed Postecoglou’s comments, his late substitutions and also what they saw as a lack of leadership on the pitch as the match started to turn in Brighton’s favour, which they believe needs to be addressed in the coming transfer windows.
Ange Postecoglou spoke to the media and when asked on whether he let the players know his thoughts after the game he stated, “Feedback is what I believe in. I’m sure they are disappointed. I don’t care. I am disappointed, the fans are disappointed.”
Postecoglou described Tottenham’s performance as lacking intensity, he said in the press conference, “We didn’t compete, lost the duels and we lacked intensity.”
After scoring their first goal in the 48th minute, Brighton stole the show and score their next two within eighteen minutes, Tottenham became unrecognisable to the team they were in the first half.
After their poor performance in the second half, Ange Postecoglou was asked about the contrast of their first and second half performance.
“That’s a real stark reminder of what elite sport is about. The core of it is competitive. If you’re not competitive it doesn’t matter how good you are or how good you think you are, you’re going to trip up.”
The Tottenham Hotspur boss discussed whether he saw this coming at half time after being so dominant in the first half.
“Well like I said, I haven’t seen it before, and I certainly didn’t feel like that’s the way the game was going to go.
“You understand that at 2-0 obviously they’re going to come out and be fairly aggressive in their approach, but that’s not the first time we’ve faced that and we’ve usually dealt with it pretty well. But obviously today we failed to do the things we needed to do,” Postecoglou told the reporters.
Postecoglou discussed with the media whether he had seen a learned something new about his Tottenham side this evening at the Amex.
“I don’t know if I learned something new, but I certainly experienced something new.”
The Tottenham boss had a chance to explain how his players weren’t overconfident with their win streak behind their back, and how important winning their last games previous was.
“Look, it’s not a couple of positive results. It was five wins, let’s just keep things in context here.
“I understand the extremes of what we do. What I’m saying is that we didn’t do the basics of everything we’ve done to get to this point, good, bad or otherwise.
“Even when we didn’t win at Newcastle, we played well and fought hard to the last second to win that game of football. We didn’t do that today and every time we’ve played that’s been an element of our game but I didn’t see that today.”
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