Tottenham’s Pochettino on Loss to Liverpool: We were poor
Mauricio Pochettino expressed disappointment after a 2-0 loss to Liverpool on Saturday, but yesterday’s defeat could be a reality check that Tottenham needed.
When Tottenham wins, Mauricio Pochettino praises his players and his side’s efforts.
No matter what happened in the game, if Spurs didn’t do good enough but still won, Pochettino could look at the three points his team claimed and be happy with the overall result.
When Spurs lose, the Argentine manager is known to not hold back on his assessment.
Pochettino’s criticism is constructive. He doesn’t thrown anyone under the bus, but he will make sure that everything that went wrong will be dissected fully and in detail.
Following Tottenham’s third Premier League loss of the season, and their first in their past 10 matches, Spurs didn’t look prepared against Liverpool.
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Mauricio Pochettino selected a strong starting XI, sans Jan Vertonghen and Danny Rose due to injury, but it wasn’t enough as Jürgen Klopp’s side were the more aggressive.
How they played, it was evident that the Reds wanted to win more than Tottenham. This is why Pochettino was honest in his examination of Spurs’ loss. They were poor.
“I need to be honest, like always, and we were poor,” Mauricio Pochettino reflected.
“It’s important to realise when you compete for big things, you need to start the game not in the way we started today, we were sloppy without aggression, a little bit ‘let’s go to the pitch and play football’ but that’s not our game, it’s about competing and we didn’t compete enough against Liverpool.”
“They were better than us and deserved the three points.”
That lack of aggression and/or quality is something that a handful of Tottenham players conceded when explaining what went wrong after an un-Spurs-like performance.
It’s not what Tottenham are known for ever since Pochettino became manager two-and-a-half years ago. And the 44-year-old agreed.
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“No, not normally, but sometimes it happens and we need to be clever, to be strong, to analyse, to find out why and to change.”
Would a rude wake-up call be the thing that this team needed after going unbeaten in nine consecutive league games?
It has been said that it’s easier to learn from your mistakes, and after Saturday, there is definitely a lot to fix to not repeat the same mistakes twice.
“Yes, it’s important to realise that you always need to compete in the Premier League and always give your best.” Pochettino admitted.
“For different reasons that we need to analyse the team, collectively, didn’t show. It’s not about quality, because we have quality, it’s aggression to try to win the three points.”
As much as Tottenham have grown in the short time that Mauricio Pochettino has been coaching the north London club, this is still a young squad.
Spurs are prone to making mistakes because they don’t have enough experience under their belts.
Yes, they have competed for a league title last season, and have trailed in games before, before winning points from a losing position.
But what this team needs is to suffer some hardships, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.
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The reality is that games like Saturday are what will help Pochettino and company realize that depth is still an issue. The starting XI (when healthy) is set. Depth, meanwhile isn’t.
Mauricio Pochettino has begun building his depth since last season and will continue building up more until he’s satisfied. Until then, all Spurs could do is carry on and try to be better prepared in order to close out the remaining 13 games on a higher note than yesterday’s performance.
There’s reason to believe that Tottenham won’t play poorly again when they step onto the pitch this Thursday in the Europa League against Gent away.