Jose Mourinho has questioned the attitude of some of his players after Tottenham were held to a 3-3 draw by LASK this evening.
Going into the game, Tottenham knew they only needed a draw to seal their place in the knockout stages of the Europa League, and while it was job done in that respect, the performance from the away side left a lot to be desired.
Mourinho named a fairly strong team for the clash in Austria, with the likes of Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Tanguy Ndombele and Son Heung-min keeping their place in the side from the draw against Chelsea on Sunday.
However, the first half performance was very similar to the one at Antwerp back in October, with Mourinho’s men failing to take the game by the scruff of the neck.
While Spurs did show some improvement in the second half, they still defended poorly and lacked a cutting-edge in attack.
The Tottenham boss pointed the finger squarely at the players’ attitude, questioning why they were unable to replicate their Europa League home form on their travels.
Mourinho said (Football.London): “We need to play like we did at home in every match that we played in the Europa League. We played Maccabi in the play-offs, Ludogorets and LASK and our team at home is a different home.
MORE SPURS STORIES
“When we go to Antwerp, to Ludogorets, to Linz, the stadium, the weather, the emptiness, of course at home it’s the same in relation to that, but that atmosphere I have a feeling, but it’s not a feeling, it’s experience, that some of the players feel they shouldn’t be here.
“But the contradiction to that is players like Son and Pierre that are players that starting every match, are examples of the guys that it doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t matter the competition, they are there and they are in front of the team every time.
“I think it’s a question of attitude, which I experienced before. Even at Manchester United, I had a similar situation when we lost two matches away in the group phase and when we get to the knockouts you get better opponents and more difficulties, the team faces matches in a different way.”
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
