Harry Kane on Tottenham’s Win, Victor Wanyama on His Return

Harry Kane talked about Tottenham’s character in coming back to win, while Victor Wanyama spoke about his emotional return to St. Mary’s Stadium.

Heading down to St. Mary’s Stadium and taking on the Premier League’s third-best defense, there was pressure on Tottenham to come away with a win and keep pace with the top four clubs above them.

To say that this was a “must-win” game is an understatement. Every fixture on the schedule is a must-win sure, but with Spurs dropping points between October and November, they can’t afford to let anymore slip away from them.

That doesn’t mean that Spurs can’t draw or lose ever again, but against teams where they are the better side than their opposition up and down the starting XI, points must be won.

Though yesterday evening, they fell behind the proverbial eight ball, early in the match.

Rust may have played a factor after a 10-day layoff or just some very bad defending gifting Virgil van Dijk possibly one of his easiest goals to score this season.

In any event, Tottenham got things going after the opening 15 minutes to score four goals unanswered. Some deflections were involved in Dele Alli’s first goal and Son Heung-Min’s goal, but such luck is needed sometimes in football.

Unfortunately, Southampton were on the wrong end of the good luck that benefited Spurs. At the same time, both Alli and Son needed to finish their chances. Which they did.

To come behind and end up winning, Harry Kane said it best that he and his teammates showed real character to get the equalizer and pile on three more goals for a comfortable victory.

“Yes, there was and it’s a difficult place to come,” Kane said, speaking about feeling the pressure to pick up a win. “Southampton are a great side and they’ve kept a few clean sheets here so to come here and win 4-1 is a great message to send out to everyone.”

“It was disappointing because we all said that Southampton like to start fast here and they did that.” Kane continued, discussing Spurs’ poor start to the match.

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“They came out of the blocks and I don’t think we’d touched the ball before we picked it out of the net. That was disappointing but we showed real character, it was a great finish from Dele to get us back in the game and in the second half we really kicked on, got the second goal early and finished the job off.”

Everyone was on the same level when it came to discussing Spurs’ character to fight through adversity and pick up three points from a losing position.

Now here’s Victor Wanyama’s assessment on the subject matter: “We know what we can do – we always push each other. We knew we had to get back to our game after they scored very early but we kept our cool, moved the ball well, got our goal and from there we took control of the game.”

“We are all strong in the team. If one of us has a chance and misses it, we know we are going to create another one or that we can do better the next time and you could see that with Harry today – he missed the penalty but he kept going and he was hungry for more.”

When asked about his return to the south coast, Wanyama explained that it was a bit emotional. The Kenyan international spent three seasons with the Saints after signing from Celtic, and was finally granted a move to rejoin Maurico Pochettino at Tottenham.

“It was a bit emotional for me today, it was a little bit difficult but as the game went on I was confident.” Wanyama said.

“It’s even more difficult [when receiving a mixed reception] but for me, the fans in the stands don’t get into my head. I am focused on the players on the pitch and on doing my job and today I think we played well as a team.”

“I’m really glad that we came here to a tough place and took maximum points.”

Next: Lloris, Eriksen and Alli Talk About Tottenham Turning Things Around

Looking ahead to a New Year’s Day match-up with Watford, Victor Wanyama gave a brief preview of what to expect: “Now it’s important to keep on doing what we are doing and also to keep going game-by-game as well.”

“Hopefully it can be the same as today, getting maximum points – that’s our aim. We can recover and be ready for the game.”