José Mourinho says he feels no pressure to revive Tottenham’s ailing season, as the club return to Europa League action, only “big responsibility, motivation and ambition” – a message he has also impressed upon his players.
Spurs play the away leg of their Europa League last-32 tie against the Austrian team Wolfsberger on Thursday in Budapest – it has been moved because of coronavirus travel restrictions – and they sorely need a boost after a dismal run of results.
They were comprehensively outplayed on Saturday in their 3-0 defeat at Manchester City, a fourth reverse in five Premier League games, which left them ninth, and they exited the FA Cup the previous Wednesday after the 5-4 extra-time defeat at Everton.
Mourinho has bemoaned a string of individual errors that have contributed to the concession of goals and he has encouraged his players to analyse the situations themselves by sending clips to their phones.
“In relation to the pressure, I don’t feel any pressure,” Mourinho said. “I feel big responsibility, which is a completely different thing. It’s much better than pressure. It’s about responsibility, ambition and motivation, not about pressure. We spoke to the players about that today and we speak again tonight in the meeting ahead of dinner.
“We are doing everything we can [about the mistakes], starting with players receiving in their own phones, iPads, immediately analysis of all the situations so they can read, they can analyse by themselves. Then the individual meeting analysing every situation and trying to improve every situation. Then on the [training] pitch, like we did today.”
Hugo Lloris has been at fault for goals in three of the last six matches but Mourinho insisted he was “still the same goalkeeper, my No 1 choice, [who has] all my trust and confidence”.
He added: “When a player is a top player, it’s not because of one mistake or two or three that means he’s not a top player again. For me, [Liverpool’s] Alisson is one of the top five goalkeepers in the world. He’s made big mistakes [against Manchester City and Leicester] but he’s one of the top five goalkeepers in the world. Hugo is the same, an amazing goalkeeper that is performing super consistently.”
Mourinho will make changes against Wolfsberger, who beat Feyenoord (twice) and CSKA Moscow in the group stage. He said that Son Heung-min had run more than 28km across 210 minutes against Everton and City last week and, as such, it feels unlikely the forward will start. Ben Davies, Davinson Sánchez and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg were the other outfield players to appear in every minute of the two games. Serge Aurier, Sergio Reguilón and Giovani Lo Celso are injured; Mourinho will consider the starting claims of Dele Alli and Gareth Bale.
Alli has made an appearance on the Fifa PlayOn Podcast in which, among other things, he looks back on Spurs’s decision to allow Amazon to make a documentary of their 2019-20 season. Mauricio Pochettino, the manager at the start of the filming, was dead against it; Mourinho was more at home in front of the lens.
“It was a weird experience,” Alli said. “It was obviously great for the fans, a great insight into Tottenham and I think a lot of people enjoyed it but I didn’t watch it. It was tough because a lot of it’s like … we don’t have any say as players. We’re not seeing what they’re putting out. Someone’s coming into our home and recording everything and we don’t have any say as players.
“For other people, it was good but for us, it’s like … pffff. Obviously they tried to get as much as they could and there were other things they would have missed. There was a big change when Poch and Mourinho … the way they handled everything. It was a lot different.”
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