Ange Postecoglou could not contain his anger as he watched Tottenham crumble against Chelsea, later admitting they have bigger problems than being vulnerable at set pieces.
Postecoglou questioned his players’ mentality after a woeful performance at Stamford Bridge with the Spurs boss as angry as we’ve seen him on the touchline.
Despite being decimated by injuries, Chelsea capitalized on two set-piece opportunities with headers from Trevoh Chalobah and Nicolas Jackson inflicting a third successive Premier League defeat on Tottenham, who now face a fight to finish fourth above Aston Villa .
Postecoglou accepted the blame on behalf of his players, saying: “It’s up to me to fix it.” Tonight we had bigger problems than set pieces. We lacked faith and conviction in our game.
“I don’t know if it’s a lack of confidence, but we’re not playing with the mentality we need to play the football we want.” It wasn’t good enough and I have to take responsibility for that.
Ange Postecoglou could not contain his anger as he watched Tottenham crumble against Chelsea.
Tottenham suffered their third consecutive Premier League defeat, damaging their top-four hopes.
Spurs once again failed to protect themselves from set-piece tricks, just days after Postecoglou said he would not change his mind.
“When we put in a performance like we did in the first half, it meant that my message wasn’t getting through.”
When asked what that message was, Postecoglou snapped: “Come on mate, we didn’t play well, do you want me to write you a file on where it went wrong?”
“I feel like we’ve lost a bit of faith and conviction in our football, and it’s up to me to change that.”
“It wasn’t about conceding the (first) goal, but about the way we played football and we weren’t good enough. That’s up to me.
‘We’ve been in a bind for a while, that’s part of our challenge and part of our growth.
‘We have to go out and perform and sometimes you have to try hard. We were poor today
In sacking James Maddison, Postecoglou said: “It’s fair to say it didn’t work out.”
The Australian-Greek coach questioned the mentality of his players after the humiliation
Micky van de Ven agreed that dreaming of the Champions League next season will be difficult
Postecoglou expressed his feelings to his players in the first half when he lost his temper on the touchline.
He shouted: ‘Stop passing it backwards!’, while pointing at Pape Matar Sarr and Cristian Romero.
Micky van de Ven reflected further on his side’s three-game winless streak after the final whistle, saying the thought of missing out on the Champions League places would be “difficult”.
“After this game, I don’t want to aspire to the Champions League because we didn’t have a good performance. Now it’s going to be difficult,” he said.
‘We can do much better than what we did today. I don’t want to say that our confidence has disappeared, Sunday (against Liverpool) is an important game. “We will take a look at this game and recover better over the weekend.”
Referring to the team’s voodoo on set pieces, Van der Ven added: “We know what to do, but every ball comes into the moment.” It’s not falling on our side.
Postecoglou was brusque with a journalist in his post-match interview, as tempers took a while to calm down.
By contrast, Mauricio Pochettino (left) enjoyed a dream night out in west London on Thursday.
“It can’t happen, two goals again from set pieces.”
Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino was delighted with the way his players stepped up amid their injury crisis, including Cobham graduates Alfie Gilchrist, Conor Gallagher and Chalobah.
“For me it was the best game,” Pochettino said. “It’s the happiest I feel afterwards.”