Jamie O’Hara has admitted that he was in disbelief when Antonio Conte decided to bring on Davinson Sanchez for Dejan Kulusesvki in the latter stages of Tottenham’s clash against AC Milan, despite the home side needing a goal to stay in the tie.
Spurs needed to beat Milan at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to stay in the Champions League after falling to a 1-0 defeat in the San Siro in the first leg.
However, the Lilywhites did not play with any sort of urgency on Wednesday and allowed their opponents to emerge with a comfortable 0-0 draw.
Spurs’ chance of drawing level on aggregate suffered a major blow when Cristian Romero picked up his second yellow card after 77 minutes for recklessly crashing into Theo Hernandez.
Conte then responded by bringing on Sanchez in place of Kulusevski in the 83rd minute despite the fact that his side needed to score to stay in the tie.
The decision certainly raised many eyebrows and O’Hara has now described the substitution as ‘crazy’.
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When asked about the move, the former Spurs midfielder told talkSPORT (8 March, 11.30 pm): “It is crazy. I couldn’t believe he did that.”
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That substitution pretty much epitomised the safety-first approach that Conte has adopted for much of the season.
Being eliminated from the Champions League would have been easier to digest had we at least had a real go yesterday, even if it meant potentially getting punished on the counter.
Instead, we made Milan’s task extremely easy by failing to gamble even when we needed to in the second half.
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