Tottenham Hotspur went crashing out of the FA Cup yesterday, after losing 2-0 to Crystal Palace in their fourth round tie.
Spurs went into the game off the back of a heart-breaking loss to Chelsea at the final hurdle of their Carabao Cup campaign.
The Lilywhites fought back well to earn a winner-takes-all penalty shootout to decide the second finalist for this year’s League Cup, but it wasn’t to be.
Getting knocked out of two cups in four days may mean no realistic silverware chances this season for Tottenham, but could it also make all the difference in their Premier League and Champions League campaigns?
With a less hectic cup-filled schedule moving forward, Pochettino will be able to concentrate purely on his two biggest competitions.
With Harry Kane and Dele Alli out, this could be exactly what Spurs need right now, and, from his press conference, Pochettino seems to agree.
He implied that the English hectic schedule makes it difficult for him to build a title-winning side.
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He said (Football London): “When you lose, it’s normal to try to find out why. Different people have different opinions. Everyone is right in their assessment when you lose, because when you lose you cannot debate, we are out of the FA Cup today. You can find 1,000, 1,000,000 and more different ways to operate or do things differently when you lose. But it’s not that debate. The debate is about, in England, we were involved in four competitions until four days ago. When the circumstances are against you, a team not building to win titles still because we are involved in many things. It’s so difficult.
“Today, yes, is a moment to try to accept that we were close to arriving to the final four days ago, and today we played a Premier League team after four days with all the circumstances we have in the squad we were still so competitive. If we’d scored the penalty, I think 2-1 with 45 minutes, maybe the result in the second half might have been different. But you have to accept that situations like today happen. Only it’s to look forward and try to improve and try to, in the rest of the season, finish in the best possible way.”
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