Pundit Gary Neville thinks Tottenham Hotspur’s tactics against Liverpool were ‘wrong’ as they attempted to break down the Reds.
Tottenham Hotspur toiled against a depleted Liverpool side on Saturday evening before finally landing a last-minute winner.
Spurs took a first-half lead through Son Heung-min as Liverpool rued two major decisions.
Curtis Jones was given a straight red card before a Luis Diaz goal was incorrectly ruled out for offside.
Cody Gakpo did pull Liverpool level before Diogo Jota also received his marching orders for two bookable offences.
A nine-man Liverpool side battled valiantly but ended up on the losing side as Joel Matip scored a late, late own goal to hand Spurs a 2-1 win.
Gary Neville reacts to Tottenham Hotspur tactics
Tottenham weren’t exactly at their best; we have seen them play much better under Ange Postecoglou this season.
Playing against 10 or even nine men can be difficult at times and Tottenham certainly found that on Saturday.
Breaking down a Liverpool side fighting for a point was not easy and Spurs needed a bit of luck to get that win.
Pundit Gary Neville – speaking on The Gary Neville Podcast – felt that the win was ‘brilliant’ for Tottenham but there were things ‘wrong’ with the performance.
Neville believed that Tottenham got it wrong in terms of how to play against nine and ten men, feeling that Spurs should have stretched the pitch a little more.
Spurs remained quite narrow in their build-up and Neville felt it only resulted in Tottenham running out of ideas of how to break Liverpool down.
“Brilliant for Spurs, I think the manager will look at how they play against 10 men, nine men in the future because I think there were some things that were wrong from a point of view of how to play, where to play on the pitch, how to stretch the game, the tempo of your passing, the spacing in your passing – these things are really important. Admittedly, it’s difficult because you’ve got a backs-to-the-wall type defence, but they could have done a lot better, Spurs, and they had run out of ideas, they had literally run out of ideas,” said Neville.
Ange Postecoglou still in the early stages at Tottenham
Tottenham fans are loving the opening weeks of the ‘Angeball’ era and there have been some euphoric moments.
Beating Manchester United at home, the last-minute winner against Sheffield United, earning a draw at Arsenal by twice coming from behind and then beating Liverpool.
There have been some real highs and Spurs have largely played some eye-catching football under Postecoglou.
Spurs will still have some issues though; going from missing out on the top seven to challenging for the title is always unlikely to happen.
Tottenham will have some tough defeats to come and Postecoglou is still learning more and more about his players after arriving from Celtic over the summer.
Postecoglou no doubt saw plenty of things that Tottenham could have done better against Liverpool; it’s up to him to make sure that Spurs deal with a situation like this a little better in the future.
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