Ange Postecoglou has spoken to the media following Tottenham's 1-0 defeat against Crystal Palace on Sunday afternoon. After making it three wins out of three in the Europa League on Thursday, the Australian elected to hand Mikey Moore his full Premier League debut in Son Heung-min's absence.
It was the Eagles who made the better start to the contest and they went close to an opener through Maxence Lacroix as he headed over from close range from substitute Will Hughes' cross. The hosts did take the lead on 31 minutes as Jean-Philippe Mateta was in the right place at the back post to convert after Eberechi Eze's clever flick had taken out Cristian Romero and Pedro Porro.
Threatening through Brennan Johnson and James Maddison towards the end of the first half, Dejan Kulusevski then had a sight of goal in the opening minutes of the second half but he couldn't convert past Dean Henderson. Palace continued to cause Tottenham problems and Guglielmo Vicario was needed to produce a brilliant one-handed save to deny Adam Wharton in the closing stages as Palace held on for victory.
Here is every word Postecoglou had to say in his post-match press conference:
What went wrong today?
It was a game which turned into, and it didn’t surprise me, a bit of a battle. Lots of stop, starting and standing around. We didn’t deal with that really well at all. We didn’t get to grips with just the nature of what was transpiring out there. It turned into a bit of a battle. They dealt with it better than we did.
After the defeat to Brighton you spoke about team not battling and doing the basics, did you sense that happened today?
No it was a different game. It was a game we needed to stay composed and not sort of fall into the trap of trying to play the game ultimately Palace wanted to play. It turned into a game that was battle after battle, duels, stop starts, waiting around. We need to be a lot more clear-headed about how we deal with that rather than fall into the trap of doing what we did today.
Physical battle, were you unhappy with any challenges in the first-half?
No. It was a big game for Palace they were always going to be desperate to get a win and that happens. I just thought there was a lot of standing around today which I hate, I’ve said that before. But I guess it’s just the nature of the way the game went.
Do you have to teach them to be clear-headed?
It's just part of the process. The more you expose players to these kind of things, you offer them the feedback and hopefully deal with it better next time.
Players need to physically match Palace?
If you want to play that sort of game, but there's another way of dealing with it as well. By staying more composed and not falling into the trap of it turning into that sort of game.
You want to play them at their own game?
No, I don't want to play them at their own game. What I want to try to do is get people to adjust to playing our game. Some of it is out of control because they're obviously going to be pretty aggressive in their approach, which is not a surprise. And how the referee deals with that, not so much in terms of the challenges but in terms of stoppages and taking their time, all of that is out of our control.
But I just felt when we had control of things, we could have dealt with it better. We ended up doing silly things, giving away silly fouls and losing our composure, which just adds to that sort of game when you can't get any traction. So I think we directed our frustration in the wrong way rather than dealing with like we should have.
How do you feel Mikey Moore did on his full Premier League debut?
Like I said it wasn't really a great game for anybody out there from our perspective. Mikey every time he's out there he'll be a better player and the more we can get him out there in the right sort of environment then he'll keep thriving. I'm sure he'll learn a lot today.
The kind of team we want to be or the way we want to play we need to be a lot more composed in the way we deal with certain things out there to not let the game get out of control.
I realise you play the way you play but any problems with the centre-backs clipping the ball about at the back for their goal?
I think even before then we could have dealt with those situations better but it was a poor goal and we should do better at that and not concede like that. There was other solutions out there and again even in that moment we didn't have to lose our composure. It just seems we kind of wanted everything to run smoothly and we know it doesn't, especially in a game like today.
There are still ways you can sort of overcome that but it was a poor goal to concede because the game was always an arm wrestle. It was never going to be one with bags of chances or really open so to concede like that was disappointing.
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