Sky Sports’ Jamie Redknapp believes Tottenham’s 1-0 home defeat to Chelsea was “one of Spurs’ worst performances”. Manager Thomas Frank was booed at full time and looked down upon by some of the players.
Tottenham suffered a disappointing defeat to London rivals Chelsea, with only one shot on target, resulting in their fifth straight defeat.
Joao Pedro’s first-half goal deepened Spurs’ home woes, with Frank’s side suffering their 12th defeat in their last 19 league matches at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with Spurs being booed loudly by their fans.
Full-time footage then appeared on social media of defenders Micky van de Ven and Jed Spence ignoring Frank’s request for fans to applaud.
Regarding this matter, Frank said at the post-match press conference: “Obviously all the players are frustrated. They want to do well, win and perform well, so I understand that.”
“Of course, I think the difficult part is being consistent through good times and bad. That’s why I visited the fans like I did. It’s more fun when you win, I can tell you that.”
Asked if their actions were acceptable, he said: “I understand why you’re asking that question, but I guess it’s one of the minor issues.
“We are giving our all to Micky van de Ven and Jed Spence and I think they have performed very well so far this season.
“Everyone’s frustrated. I don’t think it’s a big issue because we do things differently.”
Frank on record low xG: Very painful.
The loss to Chelsea left Tottenham with the lowest expected goals tally (0.05xG) for a Premier League team this season, the lowest since Opta began collecting Premier League xG data in the 2012/13 season.
Asked about his record-low xG, Frank said: “Of course I think it hurts a lot.
“I’ve never before led a team that achieved so little in one game. Of course we’ll look at what we can do to make the team better, but I think that’s one thing.”
“I think it all comes together a little bit, and we just didn’t get to that level today.”
This terrible performance left the home supporters frustrated and they showed their frustration throughout.
Asked if he understood the boos, Frank said: “Yes, 100 percent. I think everyone feels the frustration and emotion that is inherent in football. It’s very painful.”
“It’s part of the job to face you guys right now and answer some really good questions. When you’re fired up inside and you want to find a solution, you want to look back at the game and see what went wrong, all that stuff. But I think in general it’s just trying to stay calm.”
“I thought Chelsea were good. We were definitely second. We had a bad performance. I think we lacked energy and intensity. That freshness, we didn’t have that.”
“And I think the high pressure that they brought, despite what we worked on, we couldn’t quite solve it, so we need to keep working on it.
“With our high pressure, we were a little lackluster early on until we got going. Then they took a 1-0 lead and then we were chasing and it was just a vicious cycle: chasing, falling behind, intensity, energy, bad decisions.”
Redknapp: “Tottenham were very poor”
Tottenham failed to take a shot on target in the second half and lost to the Blues with zero big chances.
Former Spurs midfielder Redknapp watched the display and rated it one of the worst ever.
“It didn’t look difficult (against Spurs) tonight. It was very easy. If it had been a boxing match they would have stopped it,” he told Sky Sports.
“Tottenham were really poor. I actually thought they were going to put up a real fight tonight, but that was one of the worst performances I’ve seen from Tottenham.
“They won three home games last year and I would probably put that at No. 1 because if you look at other games, like last season when they lost 4-3, at least they were trying really hard.
“They chased the team, it could have gone either way and it was exciting.
“Today they didn’t let Chelsea put the gloves on once. They didn’t have the idea or understanding how to play and they missed the task. They made it very easy for Chelsea.”


