On Tuesday evening Tottenham Hotspur largely put in a tale of two halves performance as we welcomed in form Ajax to White Hart Lane for the Champions League Semi-Final first leg clash.
Plenty of Spurs fans accept that with our current state of play on an injury front, options were significantly limited, but the formation and some selections were open to question – especially with how Ajax dominated the opening half and established their 15th minute lead.
Speaking to Sky Sports following the game, manager Mauricio Pochettino accepted our shortcomings and accepted the blame but did point to our energy levels in the first half as being most to blame, and I think plenty will agree with him, even if the other complaints certainly didn’t help us.
“Watching now of course I can accept it was a mistake the shape we used. But there were not too many options. I am not happy – you cannot guess what happens if we play in a different way. But our lack of energy and a little sloppy. It was the not the shape that conceded the goal. Our approach to the game was not good. I am the manager so I have responsibility.”
With improvement once Moussa Sissoko helped us better control midfield and significant improvement further still in the second half where we are left ruing our wasted chances, on a statistics front, we were ahead in possession and chances, we just didn’t get enough on target to make up for the earlier poor performance.
Pochettino commented it ‘gives us hope for the second leg’ and at least reading the comments on our Match Thread that’s exactly how a good number of fans saw it given we can welcome back Sonny and maybe an injury or two as well.
With the media revelling in ‘all to do’ and focusing on how poor we were without even a nod to those players that were missing, for how good Ajax were especially in the first half, they only got two shots on target all game.
A bit of perspective helps.