Tottenham Hotspur manager Jose Mourinho was extremely frustrated when his side conceded a late equalizer and lost two points in Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Romain Saiss returned from a corner in the 86th minute to snatch a deserved point from Spurs, who had led since Tanguy Ndombele’s strike after just 57 seconds.
Spurs, who needed Hugo Lloris to save them from later goals by Ruben Neves or Fabio Silva, had spent the vast majority of the game sitting deep and defending, with Wolves regularly handling the threat from Harry Kane and Son Heung- min, but Mourinho insisted after the game that his plan was never to prioritize defense.
“Yeah, frustrating with the result,” he said (via football.london). “We have control of the game but we had 89 minutes to score more goals and we didn’t.
“It wasn’t just about not scoring goals, it was also about not being dangerous and not being ambitious. For me, that’s the problem. Of course we can come back to a corner, we can say that at Liverpool we should win and we lost. with a corner. We can say here that we should win and we drew with a corner kick. You can say that against Crystal Palace we should win and draw with a side kick.
“I don’t think it’s very, very obvious to look in that direction and not go in other directions. The other direction for me is that you score a goal from the first minute and you have 89 minutes to score more goals and we don’t. “
Mourinho also told BBC Sport: “Defending in depth is not the intention. They know what I asked them at halftime, if they couldn’t do better, it’s because they couldn’t do better. ”
Spurs have now conceded in the last ten minutes of five different games this season, but when asked if his side might have a mentality issue when it comes to holding onto the leads, Mourinho insisted that scoring more was the perfect answer to the problem.
“Of course that’s a concern, but I repeat, it’s more of a concern that we score goals early and don’t kill matches,” he added.
“Of course at Liverpool it was about the post not wanting us to win the game and there are no plans to go to Liverpool to have five, six or seven chances and score one, two, three or four goals. In this game, against Palace for example, are games where by scoring an early goal you have to try and it is that simple.
“Even defending very well, what we do as a team is not enough. It could be enough like we are defending this last quarter, we are winning 1-0 and maybe now you are asking me different questions. But my feeling would be exactly the same, scoring from the first minute, we had 89 minutes to score more goals and we didn’t. “
For moreTom gott, follow it onTwitter!
