Our mentality is strong and it will need to be
Spurs hit us for four today, the first of those four goals coming in only the second minute and it was their assistant manager and former player Ledley King who spoke after the game.
King said: “It’s always the plan, especially at home, to start as quickly as possible and put teams on the back foot. We scored an early goal, that was great, and that sets us up and we were able to dominate the game, a really strong performance.
“The transition was a big part of what we spoke about before the game. We said we needed to pick up a lot of second balls, especially Pierre (Højbjerg) and Tanguy (Ndombele), as Burnley put a lot of pressure on you and it was important our defenders won the first ball and then we picked up the second balls and were able to spring from there.
“Although we were really disappointed with the result at West Ham, there were still a lot of good things to take out of the game. The fact we had twenty attempts, got into a lot of really good positions, then we had another good performance in the Europa League, it was important to kick on again back in the Premier League. Today was the perfect response.”
It was Spurs who went into the game on a run of disappointing results and Sean Dyche admitted: “I was actually worried about the game in the sense that when teams like this are having a tough spell, they rarely do that for too long. They are a quality side and even during a questionable run, they turn up and did today.
“I didn’t want to say that before because you don’t want to tempt fate, but I did have that feeling that if they got a foothold early on, they can hurt you, and they did. We gave them the first goal, which was really awful from our point of view, although it’s rare we do that. That immediately calms them down because they could have been looking at today and thinking we were an awkward side who are hard to play against. Their manager referenced that, but when you give them a start like that, it’s very difficult.”
He continued: “It was a strange game in some ways because we’ve conceded four, but we’ve had some good play and created some openings, but that final finish was missing and therein lies the difference. If you really want to push forward and continue to improve, then they showed the moments of clarity in and around the box and that is often the difference.
“We are always trying to stimulate the players for that, but sometimes that is the gap. They put a high level of investment into these players and usually that comes with an attacking prowess. I’m not suggesting our players aren’t good players, but those clever moments in the final third are really important.”
Dyche added: “Our mentality is strong. It always has been and it will need to be, but it’s not so long ago that we were right down there in the midst of it. These are tough places to come and our season won’t be decided at places like this; it will be decided on how many points over all the games we play, so we move on to the next one.”
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