Garth Crooks expresses his ‘worry’ about Tottenham Hotspur’s current mindset

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Tottenham Hotspur suffered a costly defeat at Southampton in the Premier League over the weekend.

BBC pundit Garth Crooks has strongly claimed that Tottenham have the quarter-finals of the Champions League ‘at the back of their minds’ which is a ‘worry’ following their 2-1 defeat to Southampton on Saturday.

Crooks also bizarrely compared Spurs to Premier League duo Manchester United and Chelsea in their ‘heyday’ by stating he ‘appreciates’ how they used to get a result after European games – his comments will not sit well with fans because those teams had stronger squads and spent a lot more money in the transfer market.

Mauricio Pochettino’s side, who booked their place in the last eight of Europe’s biggest club competition after seeing off Dortmund, suffered a damaging defeat at St Mary’s despite taking the lead through striker Harry Kane.

As a result, they are now looking over their shoulders and face a difficult fight to keep hold of their top four spot in the Premier League.

Speaking to Final Score on BBC One (09/03/2019 at 5:10 pm), Crooks offered his thoughts on Spurs’ defeat after their recent European success.

“It makes me appreciate just how good Manchester United and Chelsea were in their heyday when they would come back from a big European game and they would get the result that they needed in the Premier League,” Crooks told Final Score.

“Tottenham seem to have European quarter-finals somewhere going on at the back of their mind and that’s a worry.”

Over the weekend, Chelsea dropped points at home to high-flying Wolves while Arsenal picked up all the points at home to Manchester United.

All the above teams are now direct rivals to Tottenham as they bid to secure Champions League football for another season.

If there were to drop out, and win the Champions League itself in the process, then they would automatically qualify for next season’s competition.

Nonetheless, at this moment in time, they are sitting third in the table, one point ahead of fourth-placed Arsenal, three points ahead of Manchester United and a further four points ahead of Chelsea, both of those sides sit outside of the top four.