Jose Mourinho reveals what Tottenham have been training on over lockdown

Tottenham Hotspur’ssquad has been in training for a number of weeks now leading up to the Premier League restart and it certainly seems to be showing on the pitch.

The Lilywhites were unlucky not to walk away with all three points when they faced Man United last week, with the Red Devils equalising late via the penalty spot.

Last night, Spurs managed to put two goals past West Ham without reply as they picked up their first three points of the post-lockdown football season.

This puts the Lilywhites in a far stronger position heading into the final seven games of the campaign as they hunt down a place in the Champions League for the 2020/21 season.

While Tottenham have been scoring goals again, perhaps more impressive is the fact that they have not yet conceded a goal from open play across the two games.

Jose Mourinho has now revealed that the club have been working on defensive shape over the lockdown period, even when they were only able to train in groups of five. He also mentioned a focus on attacking organisation.

In his post-match press conference, he said (Football London): “Yeah, we worked hard and we started that when we were only allowed to work in groups of five. We chose always the back four to be together and we worked a lot on that. In the past two weeks, we did it collectively and I am really happy that in the last two matches we have only conceded one goal from a funny penalty and we managed to be really solid. I am happy with that.

“We also trained attacking organisation and we know we have to improve a lot. We have to be more consistent in our movement, in our dynamic and our intensity which is difficult to keep in this moment. Tonight I had a rich bench, I had a bench full of options which allowed me to make changes to try to win and then to have a player of Winks’ quality on the bench to help us cool down and hide the ball from West Ham. The bench tonight was very important for us.

“We had basically two weeks to train collectively but as I said before we were conceding too many goals. The team had doubts defensively. It was very important to work on defensive organisation and I’m really happy that in two matches we concede only one goal in a penalty and the team looks more solid.

“I’m happy with that and for the players, I think it’s a good feeling, even for the attacking players to feel the team is defensively stronger is very important. There are no good teams without a good defensive structure.”

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