Jose Mourinho has revealed that Tottenham had to be resourceful in the way they played their friendly against Norwich City on Friday after learning that the match scheduled for Saturday against Reading would not be going ahead.
Spurs were initially supposed to play two friendly matches in a space of 24 hours to give all their players a chance to develop match fitness (Football.London).
However, the Spurs boss has revealed that they instead agreed to divide the game against Norwich into four periods of thirty minutes.
When asked how the players fared against Norwich, Mourinho told Spurs TV: “Not against Norwich City, with Norwich City.
“(It was) a good training session. We needed minutes. We needed to know the feeling of playing here without our supporters and to have this training session with another PL team is the best thing.
“Of course it was a different match. We were supposed to divide the team into two and play another match tomorrow but it was not possible.
“So I agree with Daniel (Farke) to have this match of four periods. And of course, when you get into the third and the fourth period, you start making a lot of changes because in the end, what you want to work tactically, you do it in the training ground.”
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“Today was much more about compete, minutes, competition, intensity, and very important to do it and end this last week without any injury because we all know that in this first matches, even in friendlies, there is always a risk of getting injuries.”
Tottenham were beaten 2-1 on Friday owing to two late strikes from the Canaries but Mourinho insisted that the result did not matter and that the main purpose was to allow the players to adapt to playing behind closed doors.
The 57-year-old also revealed that he made wholesale changes to the team in the last period to ensure no player was fatigued.
He added: “We decided to mix them and give almost the same amount of minutes to everyone. We didn’t want to bring players to the limit of fatigue. Of course, nobody played all four periods. That would be too much.
“In the last period, we played some of the young boys. Even (George) Marsh, who played for Leyton Orient (on a season-long loan) but joined us for this period of preparations where we need numbers. So, it was good.
“I thank Daniel and his players, and everyone at Norwich for coming to us and sharing with us this opportunity because it was the last opportunity for us and them before our Friday matches.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Fans really should not be reading too much into the result given the fact that it was an extremely unorthodox game that was held in four periods of thirty minutes each. The most important thing was for players to get some competitive action under their belt and come out of it without any injuries.
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