After seeing his side scrape through a tight game in the Europa League this evening, Ange Postecoglou has reflected on a number of different circumstances that made things difficult for his team.
Tottenham travelled to Hungary to take on Ferencvaros in the second game of their Europa League journey, and despite high expectations for a comfortable win, Ange Postecoglou‘s men found it difficult to take control of the game on the night.
An intense spell of pressure from the home side saw them put the ball in the net early on, but the goal was disallowed for a very tight offside. Not long after, Pape Matar Sarr gave Spurs the lead after some hard work from both Mikey Moore and Will Lankshear.
In the second half, Spurs went in search of that all-important second goal, and they got it with just four minutes of normal time to go, with Brennan Johnson making it five goals in five games. But, just minutes later, Ferencvaros pulled a goal back, giving the game a nervy finish.
Ultimately, Tottenham saw out the game, got their fifth win in a row, and maintained their strong start to the Europa League campaign, but it wasn’t easy.
Discussing the nature of the game, the environment, and the way his team ground out the win, Postecoglou was clearly pleased with the way things went, all things considered.
He told Football.London: “Irrespective of who you play in Europe away, it’s always a challenge. You saw with the atmosphere the crowd create, they get really behind their team and the conditions as well. So there’s a whole range of things you need to deal with.
“Obviously we made quite a number of changes to the team, including putting the young boys in, but I thought they handled it really, really well.
“We needed to defend and defend well, we played some good football and created some good chances, maybe could have had a couple more and most importantly win an away European tie which I think is a credit to the lads.”
Many expected Spurs to run away with this game, but we have to remember that any team that’s in the Europa League is going to be a top team, and playing them away from home is so, so tough. It wasn’t pretty, we didn’t always look convincing, but we got the job done, and that kind of resilience is going to be important this year.
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