Antonio Conte has claimed that his side started playing with a desire to hurt Bournemouth after the home side scored their second goal.
Tottenham were staring down the barrel of their third straight Premier League loss when Kieffer Moore got between Davinson Sanchez and Emerson Royal to head in Bournemouth’s second goal on the 49th minute.
Conte must have been fearing the worst at that time but his players certainly did not let their heads drop and instead started dominating proceedings and pinning their opponents back.
The Cherries backline was simply not able to cope with waves of pressure that Tottenham put them under and the Lilywhites completed a sensational comeback with Rodrigo Bentancur getting a stoppage-time winner after Ryan Sessegnon and Ben Davies brought them level.
Conte said after the game that he was not too displeased with his side’s performance in the first half but admitted that his players played with more of a killer instinct after going two goals down.
The Tottenham head coach told Football.London: “I don’t want to think which we would be my mood if we lose this game.
“I have to be honest, and also, after the first half, my feeling was positive. The only situation that I ask of my players is that we are to show more personality and take more responsibility because this game was on us.
“I think in the second half, despite conceding the second goal, we started to play nasty, with a will and desire to hurt the opponent. To not only move the ball and show ‘look, we are good and so nice’ but in an effective way.
“I think we created many chances to score and in the end, we won the game in a difficult stadium because Bournemouth is a really good team.
“It is not easy to play against them because when they play with these two strikers, it is very difficult to put pressure because every time you put pressure, they play a long ball.
“They had a good combination between the two strikers, but in the end, I think it was vital for us this win, especially after two losses in the Premier League, and now this win has given us enthusiasm and passion for going into Marseille and for playing a final.
“This game will be a final for us to go to the next round of the Champions League.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Bournemouth have been very difficult to break down since Gary O’Neil took over and the fact that they had a two-goal cushion made Tottenham’s task a lot harder.
I thought we were simply brilliant with the way we opened them up in the final 40 minutes of the encounter. This sort of win was exactly what we needed to boost the player’s morale after some poor results of late.