Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino has expressed his disappointment and frustration at his side again throwing away a lead.
In Spurs' opening game they took an early 2-0 lead in the first half, but couldn't maintain a clean sheet until the break. Olympiacos scored through Podence just before half-time.
Pochettino wasn't impressed.
“I feel very disappointed,” the manager said. “In the first half, I wasn’t happy with the performance. From the beginning, we had a plan, and we didn’t respect the plan.
"That’s what disappointed me the most. I told them at half-time. We scored two good goals but if you analyse the performance only, it wasn’t great."
"We conceded a lot of chances and the way we conceded the first goal was so painful."
The Spurs boss wasn't happy his team didn't bring their weekend Premier League form to the Champions League.
"We didn’t translate from Saturday (in the victory over Crystal Palace) the aggressivity that is needed in these games. We were a little bit better in the second half, but conceded a very soft penalty.”
Penalty
That penalty was converted for the equaliser and the game finished 2-2. Pochettino was asked if it was a similar situation to the game with Arsenal.
“It’s easy to explain. When we don’t show the intensity that the competition demands, we struggle. We are not talking about the quality of players.
"We are talking about focus, concentration, anticipation. How many times did we anticipate the action? How many times were we not productive like we were against Palace?
"It’s not about tactics or quality players but the level of fight. You need to match the opponent in aggressivity, excitement, motivation. That is the first demand – you need to work."
When asked about the apparent substandard performance of individuals such Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen, he said: "It’s not only the responsibility of one person; it’s everyone’s responsibility.
It is not possible how we started tonight and it is a massive difference to Saturday. It’s a massive disappointment. We can talk about scoring twice and playing better second half, but this season we are conceding a lot of chances and a lot of goals. We need to change that. The only way is to be more demanding. Training needs to be harder. Psychologically harder.”
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
