Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford played out an entertaining 2-2 draw at the Gtech Community Stadium earlier this afternoon in their first Premier League match since November. Read the match report here, the statistical overview here, and player ratings here.
Speaking to the club’s media team after the dramatic 4-goal draw, Spurs head coach Antonio Conte expressed his satisfaction at his side’s ability to come from behind yet again and secure a league-high 14 points from losing positions, but stated that they must start matches better going forward after today’s slow start that saw them go 2-0 down after 51 minutes.
Conte began by highlighting the difficulty of the fixture, praising Brentford’s physicality and their ability to go toe-to-toe with the division’s top sides:
“We knew the difficulty to play against Brentford, especially away. This season they have beaten City, United, against Chelsea they drew, and maybe deserved to win. Brentford is a very physical team”, said Conte.
“If you go to press, and we prepared to press high, and to stay with the (defensive) line very high, then they play a long ball and they are very good on the long balls, set pieces, throw-ins, you have to pay attention.
“Every time they have the possibility, they play a long ball into the box. This was a game that we prepared for very well but, at the same time, we wanted to start in a different way.”
Indeed, Brentford caused all sorts of problems from those situations for the first hour or so today, with their opener coming from an early long ball that caught Spurs sleeping, and their second coming from a corner.
However, Spurs eventually improved and fought back to level midway through the second half, something that impressed Conte:
“For me, I think the second part of the game was very, very positive. We played with a great intensity, played with the right desire to score and to create difficulties for our opponent”, said the Italian.
Nevertheless, Conte underlined the nee for his side to be ‘mentally stronger’ at the start of matches to avoid having to come from behind to get results in the first place:
“..We have to know, this is maybe nine games in a row that we start a game and concede a goal. We go down, and then we start to play, and we come back. I think that we have to start from the first second, mentally strong, to play in the way we played in the second part of the game until the end.”
Conte is right – it is now nine consecutive matches in all competitions that Spurs have fallen behind (and 15 out of 23 in all competitions so far this season).
Conte elaborated more on this issue and how he will seek to address it with his players going forward:
“I spoke with my players, because now it’s becoming usual, this type of situation. Okay, we were good to come back, also, at the end, I thought we deserved to win the game, but we have to try to improve.
“It’s important to be stable in every moment of the game, from the start until the end. You know very well the difficulty of this league. At this moment, United, Chelsea and Liverpool stay out of a place in the Champions League.
“For this reason, we have to continue to improve, to work very hard and put in our mind to go to another level.”