Thomas Frank felt we weren’t at our ‘free flowing’ best but pointed to the ‘togetherness’ that gets a team over the line as we beat Villarreal 1-0 in our UEFA Champions League league phase opener on Tuesday night.
Lucas Bergvall marked his first appearance in the competition with the decisive play, running onto Pedro Porro’s pass down the right and whipping in a dipping cross that Villarreal goalkeeper Luis Junior spilled backwards into his own net. That was with four minutes on the clock and enough for the MD1 points as Europe’s flagship tournament returned to N17.
Speaking to us afterwards on SPURSPLAY, Thomas reflected: “I’m very happy with the win, very happy with the three points, very happy with the clean sheet and how we defended throughout the game - we gave very little away.
“The effort, the structure, the principles are very good most of the time. The togetherness, that grind in a game when everything’s not free flowing, it’s so important if you want to win enough games over the season.
“Obviously, the offensive side of the game was not free flowing, and that’s a little down to on the day, we didn’t hit our highest level. We also need to give credit to Villarreal, they worked hard, they were super aggressive in defence and defended well and we weren’t quite in sync, we lost a few easy balls and passes.
“This tournament is so difficult. We faced a very good team tonight. It’s very small margins, a mistake from their goalkeeper was the only goal. We’ll definitely look into the offensive part - we’d like to improve that. That’s the crazy thing about football - we won, relief, move on again, but in the back of my head I know we haven’t played a top game, that irritates me a bit, so you’re never really happy, but that’s all part of it.”