Spurs 0-1 West Ham - Mauricio's verdict

Mauricio Pochettino felt a combination of conceding first and not managing the ball in the second half cost us against West Ham on Saturday.

Michail Antonio scored the only goal of the game in the 67th minute – the first goal we’ve conceded in five matches at the new stadium ultimately led to our first defeat.

We had our chances in the first half as Lucasz Fabianski denied Heung-Min Son and Christian Eriksen and Lucas Moura fired just wide. West Ham also had chances on the break as the game opened up after their goal and we looked set to rescue a point with another late show only for Vincent Janssen’s header to be cleared off the line by Fabian Balbuena.

Mauricio reflected: “We created a lot of chances to be in front in the first half and then (we’d be able to) manage the game in a different way but if you don’t score, you can always give the opponent some space and in the second half, we didn’t manage the ball properly, conceded a lot of space to them and players like Arnautovic and Antonio can create problems and in one action, they can score.

“I’m happy with the effort but the performance in the second wasn’t the performance we expected. It’s always difficult because we came through a busy period with a lot of circumstances against the team.

“I thought we deserved a draw but sometimes in football this can happen, you can lose and we have to accept that. I’m disappointed but we need to move on.”

We move on quickly - to the first leg of our Champions League semi-final against Ajax on Tuesday (8pm).

Mauricio added: “We need to assess the players and we’ll see. I hope we can recover some players and now it’s about recovery until Tuesday. It’s up to us to manage the situation, make sure they rest and are ready to compete on Tuesday.”