Brennan Johnson reflects on Wolves: “We almost went too safe, including myself”

Football always has a nasty habit of turning your emotions upside down in no time at all. At around 2.10pm on Saturday, Brennan Johnson’s first goal for the club looked like securing a hard-earned win on the road at Wolves, as we led 1-0 with six minutes of added time just about to be announced.

By 2.20pm, everything had changed. Wolves turned the game around with goals from Pablo Sarabia (90+1) and Mario Lemina (90+6) and Brennan was left to reflect on what might have been at Molineux.

They were honest reflections, as well, as the Wales international, only recently back from injury, pored over our first away loss in the Premier League this term, and only our second defeat in 12 so far.

Speaking to our Review Show from Molinuex, Brennan said: “It happens in football… late goals, we’ve enjoyed them, now we’re tasting the defeat, and it’s sickening. It’s really tough to take and at the end of the day, it’s all about how we perform.

“Results are really important but, today, if we want to get the result, there are certain things we could have done in terms of moving the ball and getting in better positions. Obviously, everyone is gutted with the performance, but we can’t complain too much because we didn’t kill the game off.”

Asked what it was about the performance, Brennan added: “We started so well, moving the ball quickly, and we scored so quickly. After that, we went into the head space of getting three points, and that’s not the right mentality because there was so much time to go in the game

“If we continued playing how we did at the start we’d go on and keep pushing, but we almost went too safe, including myself. We all went into safety mode thinking if we see it out, we get the three points, but we scored after five minutes, so we can’t play like that.

“We’ll look back at it, try to be more aggressive in our pressing, positioning and playing forward. That’s the most disappointing thing, we could have killed the game off.”

As for his maiden Spurs goal, he added: “It's a really proud moment to score for the club, something I’ve wanted to do since I arrived here, so it’s nice to get the goal. We’ll go back to the training ground, work harder than ever and be ready for the next game after the internationals.”

Brennan now joins the Wales squad with Ben Davies and Joe Rodon for huge World Cup qualifiers against Armenia and Turkey. We’re next in action against Villa at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday 26 November (2pm).