Jose Mourinho has claimed that it was ‘difficult’ to compete with Manchester United towards the end of the game on Friday as he was unable to call on two key players from the bench.
Dele Alli and Lucas Moura both missed the return to Premier League action for Spurs as the club only managed to secure one point at home to United.
Mourinho insisted that he was pleased with the general performance from his players but suggested that his side could not keep up with United in the final 20 minutes.
He told the Spurs website: “I thought we were very, very good, strong, fresh in our attacking units, and then in the last 20 minutes when they started making their changes and pushing a bit more… I didn’t have on the bench Lucas and Dele, or if they’d started, Son or Lamela or Bergwijn, so for us it was difficult.
“We wanted to press like we did in the first half and our four attacking players, they were a little bit in trouble. Even so, the team fought in the last 20 minutes. The team was very compact and only a very strange penalty gave them a goal.”
Alli will likely return to the squad for the West Ham game following his one-game suspension, but the extent of Lucas Moura’s injury has not yet been revealed.
The draw has left Spurs four points adrift of their Champions League qualification rivals, Man United who currently sit in fifth.
Spurs Web Opinion
We did struggle in the second half as we began to sit deeper and deep in our own final third. Even Harry Kane took up the position of a midfielder when we did not have the ball, so anytime we did win it back, there was no one forward to offload the ball to.
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