Hugo: “I owed those saves to the team”

Hugo Lloris took us into his mindset after his mistake in our 2-1 win against Southampton on Saturday.

Trying to play out from the back, Hugo was caught by Danny Ings in his six-yard box, the ball bundled over the line for 1-1. Already down to 10 men, it was a blow, but both the skipper and the team responded superbly.

Harry Kane fired us back into the lead before the break and Hugo produced world-class saves to keep out James Ward-Prowse and Maya Yoshida in the second half as our 10 men stayed strong to take maximum points.

“As a goalkeeper, sometimes you face that situation,” reflected Hugo. “I was really upset with myself, of course, and the feeling was only a little better because we scored the second goal just before half-time.

“At this moment, you just need to stay calm, stay focussed on your game and it’s more about how you respond after that mistake, we showed personality and I’m pleased with my performance in the second half, but I owed these saves in the second half to help my team-mates. The most important thing is that this mistake didn’t cost us points.”

Hugo told us during the week that it was about performance and result after a tricky week.

“We knew the context before the game,” he added. “We knew we had to respond as a team, and this is what we showed. We didn’t play the best game ever, but we showed a lot of togetherness, personality, especially after the red card and then after my mistake, we reacted in a fantastic way with the second goal. Then we managed the second half and stayed strong.

“Maybe this is what we needed at this stage. You don’t have to play fantastic football to prove yourselves that you are ready to compete, sometimes these types of games, especially the circumstances, help you to improve.

“Now we need to build. We need continuity in our results, to get as many points as we can and try to find a rhythm of performances and results and everything will be better.”