Nuno Espirito Santo
Nuno Espirito Santo said: “If you want to go that way I totally understand. I totally understand what you are trying to say, but it is about ‘us’, not about ‘me. It’s about ‘us’. We have to improve. We have to find the right way. We started well. When we are not doing well, criticism happens. It’s always going to happen, always going to be. So what do we have to do? Improve. I’m aware of what’s happening. I’m aware of what happened before. If you want me to go through again, I will go through again. With all my respects I think I’m very clear. We are on it. We are working hard. We are aware that we have problems we have to improve on. The energy is exactly the same. Of course when things are well, you smile, you’re happy. This is life. But my energy? It’s always the same.”
Espirito Santo was also asked about Harry Kane drifting away from the penalty box too much on Sunday in the 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea. Chelsea and Liverpool defenders Marcos Alonso and Joel Matip have touched the ball in the opposition penalty area more than Kane this season and the Spurs boss was asked whether the England captain, who started on the left on Sunday, was wandering deep because he was following his instructions or doing his own thing.
Nuno Espirito Santo said: “No, the realisation that we are not able to build enough situations is the problem that we have. All individual situations that happen with the players – touches, actions – are a product of the team. At the same time we’ve got to analyse and we look at the problems we have in defence. It’s the same approach in terms of analysing the situation. It has to do with the team. Our main focus must and always be the team. I would like to see all our players. If I can put our players, six, seven in the box is where games are decided, I will do so.”
Spurs’ back-to-back defeats in London derbies against Crystal Palace and Chelsea have sucked some of the wind out of the team’s sails. Espirito Santo is as disappointed with the six goals conceded across the two matches as he is with the attacking but he made it clear that both matches brought different circumstances.
Nuno Espirito Santo said: “Totally different games. What happened in Palace was one circumstance. We were 0-0, one man down, we conceded from a penalty. When we concede we are not able to keep consistency and solid enough to go and chase the game. We start making mistakes. We create too much distance among ourselves and that’s a problem. On the game against Chelsea, fantastic first half, we could spend a lot of time speaking about it, we already did, but not so good [after], we were punished from a set piece in the first minutes of the second half. Of course, we had fitness problems because naturally players that are away, that was our decision to put them to play, they were in Croatia, players returning from injuries with not too much training. If you want to be accurate in your analysis, it’s not enough to do with the physicality of the team. It has to do with individual aspects. How do we solve that? We don’t have too much time on the training ground. Let’s use the competition and let’s manage our squad properly.”
Espirito Santo also reiterated his concern that his Tottenham players are showing some fragility in struggling to fight back after conceding.
Nuno Espirito Santo said: “It happened in Palace and it happened in the second half of Chelsea. With Palace, hard circumstances, we were one man less, it’s tough, but Chelsea, we were not able to compete the same way that we did,” he admitted. So that is a concern, but at the same time that is a challenge for us to sustain our performance and react better. You can concede at any moment in a game and you have to be able to react and chase the game again and doing the same things. Not creating distance. It’s the most important aspect. When the team opens and players start getting far from each other, it’s much, much harder to recover the ball.”
