Mauricio Pochettino Wants Tottenham to Be More Clinical
Tottenham’s unbeaten run in the Premier League continued with a win over Middlesbrough on Saturday afternoon.
Mauricio Pochettino and the rest of his team will gladly take a win anyway they can. But as Spurs’ manager, he knows that Tottenham can do much better than they are currently showing.
For instance, a 1-0 win over Sunderland should have been more had it not been for the fine play of 22-year-old goalkeeper Jordan Pickford.
Against Gillingham, Spurs buried them in the second half with a flurry of goals. A 1-0 lead quickly escalated to five by the end of 90 minutes.
Lastly, Middlesbrough were down early by Son Heung-Min’s brace in the opening 23 minutes. And while Boro came back in the 65th minute with good substitutions and a boisterous Riverside Stadium willing their team on to make the second half very tense and nerve-racking, Spurs got a deserved win.
So why is it that a 2-1 win wasn’t enough for Hugo Lloris and Toby Alderweireld?
An easy explanation would be looking at the total shots that Spurs have racked up in their previous three matches. Thirty-one shots, nine on target against Sunderland, 30 shots, 12 on target against Gillingham and 19 shots, five on target against Middlesbrough.
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Adding it all up equals 80 total shots with 26 on target, yet, besides a blowout win in the League Cup over the Gills, the Black Cats and Boro were hanging on.
Lloris and Alderweireld felt that Spurs should have scored more goals with the amount of chances they had in front of the net which is understandable. And it’s something that Mauricio Pochettino will look to fix throughout this season.
“We were fantastic in the first half and it’s a shame we only scored twice,” Pochettino said (via Spurs’ official site). “We have to learn, we need to be more aggressive and clinical and improve our percentage in front of goal.”
“If that doesn’t happen then the second half can be difficult to manage. You always allow the possibility of the opponent scoring a goal and then you can suffer.”
“But I’m happy with the victory, we fully deserved the win after the 90 minutes and I’m very pleased for everyone.”
Tottenham found a way to get on the board early with two goals and just needed to hold on. It’s not a sound strategy to defend after getting a comfortable lead, but against Middlesbrough — who only had two shots on target — it worked.
Mauricio Pochettino is happy with the overall result no doubt, though he is looking at Saturday’s game as Spurs winning the first half and losing the second half. Tottenham were victorious in the end but they still have plenty of work to do in order to be a much better team.
“You always try to fix some things. We wanted to follow in the same way in the second half but be more aggressive, more focused,” Pochettino added.
“I’m not so happy in the second half because we lost that half 1-0, but we need to look forward, improve and learn.”
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