Tottenham Hotspur
·20 October 2024
Tottenham Hotspur
·20 October 2024
Ange Postecoglou spoke about the importance of capitalising on dominant periods in matches after three goals in eight minutes secured a thrilling 4-1 win against West Ham in the Premier League on Saturday.
Trailing 1-0 after 18 minutes of a typical all-action encounter against the Hammers, we importantly responded before the break when Man of the Match Dejan Kulusevski cut in from the right and whipped in a low shot that beat Alphonse Areola at his near post.
Heung-Min Son then played a huge role as we completely turned it around. The skipper, back from injury, played a lovely pass into Destiny Udogie, who then rolled back for Yves Bissouma to fire home from 16 yards for 2-1 on 52 minutes.
Three minutes later, Deki took off again from the right, cut inside and cleverly backheeled into Sonny, whose shot came back off Areola, hit defender Jean-Clair Todibo and rolled slowly over the line for 3-1. Sonny then struck the inside of the post before capping a mesmeric spell with a trademark finish, racing onto Pape Matar Sarr’s brilliant pass, shifting past Todibo and simply blasting through Areola.
There was further good news as Richarlison returned from injury late on, and the only thing missing was a goal for Brennan Johnson to make it seven goalscoring games on the trot, the record eluding him this time around.
Speaking to us on the Review Show, Ange was asked about that scintillating three-goal spell. “We know in most games that we’ll have those periods, it’s about capitalising,” he said. “The fans played their part, you sensed when we scored the second goal that they created a good energy in the stadium and the players feed off that.
“We could tell if we went up a gear in that time... and the key thing is we did capitalise, we scored the goals, could have had a couple more. In those moments sometimes so far this year we haven’t capitalised, maybe got a goal, but kept the opposition in it. This time, we blew them away.”
As for his overall view, Ange was pleased all round. “I thought the boys were good today,” he added. “West Ham gave us a bit of an arm wrestle in the first half, they’re a tough team to play against, they have some physicality you have to deal with, it was a disappointing goal we let in but the response to that was good.
“We created some good chances, finally got the goal we deserved. In the second half, we were really dominant and showed all the facets of our game that we needed to, I thought we were exciting going forward, but we had to do some defensive work that I thought we did really well.”