‘The ambition is there’ – Mourinho admits Spurs have to be more clinical to challenge for title

Jose Mourinho has insisted that Tottenham still retain ambition of winning the Premier League title despite their loss at Anfield yesterday but admitted that his players need to be more ruthless in front of goal.

With the game finely poised at 1-1, Tottenham had a number of great opportunities to take the lead at the start of the second half.

The two gilt-edged chances fell to Steven Bergwijn and Harry Kane, with the Dutchman hitting the post after being one on one with the goalkeeper, and the England captain heading over the bar from just a few yards out despite being unmarked in the penalty area.

Despite not creating too many great opportunities themselves, Liverpool punished Spurs late on when Roberto Firmino produced a bullet header past Hugo Lloris from a corner kick.

Mourinho admitted that his side went into yesterday’s game looking to take all three points and that they will continue approaching every game with the same intention.

When asked if a defeat like the one at Anfield can be learning curve for his side as they push for the title, the Spurs boss told Football.London: “You know I think the first thing that makes title contenders is to go to every match to win it, with that ambition.

“I promise you that the ambition is there. If in any match you see us not trying to win it, it’s not because we won’t want or that’s not our proposal, it’s because the opponent pushes us to different situations.

“That’s the first step but normally you have to kill matches of this dimension. You have just to kill it. The game was there. We were in the face of the keeper two or three times and we just have to kill it.

“Steven Bergwijn has two face to face with the keeper, we have the corner of Harry [Kane] with the free header, we had other counter-attacking situations that we didn’t finish. We had it, we knew how to hurt and we should do much more than we did.”

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You could tell from Jose’s demeanour in the post-match press conference and from his answers that he was devastated at our failure to take our chances. We missed a great chance to pick up a win an Anfield and land a significant psychological blow in the title race.

I believe that after some time to reflect, he, like many Spurs fans, would realise that we did a lot of things right yesterday and that it was just one of those nights. Had we been a bit more clinical in front of goal, the performance would have been hailed as a near-perfect one.

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