Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino: It was an unbelievable game
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino described Saturday’s cup tie with Wycombe Wanders as an unbelievable game after Spurs had to come back twice and end the game with only 10 men.
There are many words to describe Tottenham’s 4-3 win over Wycombe Wanderers following their FA Cup fourth round tie. For Mauricio Pochettino, it was unbelievable.
The word unbelievable after witnessing Spurs engineer a comeback once it reached the hour mark is very appropos.
Spurs under Pochettino have been steadily improving as a team who are able to come back and pick up valuable points from a losing position.
Sometimes Tottenham secures a draw, other times they win outright.
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Saturday’s seven-goal thriller was the latter for Spurs as they moved onto the next round of the FA Cup.
“Unbelievable, crazy,” Mauricio Pochettino began his post-match comments.
“To be honest, they [Wycombe] were much better than us in the first half, full credit to them. In the second half we increased our level and improved our performance and we deserved to win at the end, with a little luck. The second half was better.”
The second half did indeed see Spurs’ levels increase. Their play was clearly better than before. Yes, they scored four goals but offensively and defensively speaking, Tottenham were more technically sound.
It wasn’t as poor as the opening 45 minutes were Spurs conceded two goals relatively quickly.
As for what changed, there wasn’t anything special in Pochettino’s half-time speech — mostly because he didn’t allude to it. He just reflected back, noting that the first half belonged to Wycombe but the second half was Tottenham’s.
“Yes, I was calm in the changing room, I wasn’t upset, only that we didn’t find the solution to try to stop them and create more chances than we created.” Pochettino explained his feelings during half-time.
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“Full credit to Wycombe, they played better than us in the first half, the second half was different, we scored four goals, that’s always difficult and I think we deserved in the end to be in the next round.”
“However, if you analyse the game, it was an unbelievable game.”
One of the key things to take away from this win, besides Spurs’ four second half goals, is the fact that Tottenham managed to win with 10 players on the pitch to close out the final 24 minutes (stoppage time included).
“It’s true, we played more than 20 minutes with 10 men.” Mauricio Pochettino continued.
“Okay, maybe we’re playing a League Two team but in the FA Cup it’s impossible to demonstrate that you are at different level.”
“At the moment when they scored for 3-2 it was tough but the team always believed, like in the second half against Manchester City, we showed character. There are a lot of positives to take and we’re into the next round.”
The reason why Spurs were reduced to 10 men is because Kieran Trippier was forced to leave via injury. Initially it looked like a back injury and then a rib injury. But in actuality it appears to be a knock on the right-back’s hip.
“Kieran got a knock to his hip and we will assess him tomorrow [which is today, Sunday]. We hope it’s not a big issue.” Pochettino added.
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As of this writing there hasn’t been any updates on Trippier’s diagnosis but like Mauricio Pochettino mentioned, hopefully it’s not too serious because Spurs can ill-afford to lose another player long-term to an injury.