Spurs 2-0 Fulham | Ange’s verdict: “Our work without the ball won us the game”

As jubilant fans continued celebrating long after the final whistle, Ange Postecoglou gave an indication of the standards being set at the club with his breakdown of the performance in a 2-0 win against Fulham that took us back to the top of the Premier League on Monday night.

Ange praised the team’s work without the ball but was less impressed with the second half display as we made it nine unbeaten at the start of the campaign and four wins out of four at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Our pressing game led to both goals, as we read the play and intercepted Fulham’s passes out from the back. For the first on 36 minutes, Micky van de Ven read Calvin Bassey's pass, cushioned the ball into Richarlison, he found Heung-Min Son who did the rest, brilliantly, whipping the ball into the top corner from 20 yards. For the second 10 minutes into the second half, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg intercepted another Bassey clearance, drilled a first-time pass into Son, he found James Maddison who finished clinically for his first home goal.

Fulham carved out a few good chances after that bit either found a defender in their way or Guglielmo Vicario, who followed up a fine reaction save to deny Joao Palhinha in the first half with a another to keep out Raul Jimenez six minutes from time.

Speaking on our Review Show, Ange told us: “It was a good win, the boys worked hard, our work without the ball was again outstanding, as it has been all year, and that’s what won us the game.

“In the first half we were good, we had to be patient, Fulham were well organised so we had to bide our time a bit, probably could have scored a couple more goals with the chances we created and put the game to bed.

“In the second half, we were just really wasteful with the ball, really poor, as poor as we’ve been all year to be honest. Vic was outstanding in a couple of moments to keep a clean sheet for us. We’ll take the win, it’s another good win for us, but plenty to learn.

“Don’t get me wrong, people should enjoy it, I’m grumpy because that’s just the way I am. At the end of the day, if we want to be the team we want to be, we have to take opportunities and lessons to improve and not get sidetracked by results.

“There will be days where we may not win, but we play our football and I’ll be more than happy to commend the performance. I’m not going to let the result take away the fact that we can, and we’ve already showed that we can, play better with the ball than we did in the second half.

“The defensive side of our game was outstanding, collectively, the whole group, the way we pressed and the way we stayed disciplined to that process, it got us the win, and sometimes that’s just as important as anything else in the game.

“There are always areas to improve, and we will. In the second half I felt we took a few liberties with our football that we haven’t so far, we’ve been really disciplined in our approach. My role within that is to make sure I’m always honest with my feedback to the players, that’s what they’ll want, they will want to know how they’re going to get better, and we’ve got plenty of things from the second half to show them how we can.”