Southampton 2-1 Spurs - Mauricio's verdict

Mauricio Pochettino admitted defeat at Southampton was ‘difficult to explain’.

We were in complete control at half-time at St Mary’s. We’d dominated possession and territory, created chances, hit the woodwork twice and taken the lead thanks to Harry Kane’s finish from Dele Alli’s assist.

Dele returned from six weeks out with a hamstring problem and was superb in that first period, Lucas Moura's pace troubled Southampton’s back line and we weaved patterns all over the pitch.

It all changed in the second half. Southampton pushed on, started to create chances themselves and broke through when Stuart Armstrong’s cut back from the byline somehow evaded Davinson Sanchez, Jan Vertonghen and Danny Rose and even then, Yan Valery scuffed his shot into the ground, which meant the ball lifted up over Hugo Lloris and home.

Five minutes later the unthinkable. Armstrong was tripped by Kyle Walker-Peters on a Southampton counter-attack and James Ward-Prowse curled the free-kick into the top corner from 22 yards.

We were left stunned.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Mauricio. “It’s difficult to accept and understand. We changed a lot from the first half to the second half.

“We need to analyse and be critical… to criticise ourselves because I think it’s impossible. If you want to play for big things it’s a game you should be winning. We need to talk a lot.

“It’s difficult to understand. When you are in control for the first 45 minutes…the game is 90 minutes, not only 45 minutes and in the second half we didn’t play in the way we should play. It’s something I don’t want to accept.

“It’s very disappointing, difficult to talk, difficult to explain and now the worst thing is we have three weeks ahead without competition and it’s difficult now to put out all those bad feelings.”

Our next game isn’t until 31 March when we travel to Liverpool in the Premier League.