Ange Postecoglou slammed the worst Tottenham defeat of his reign after a second half collapse saw them go down 3-2 to Brighton.
Spurs were 2-0 up at the Amex thanks to goals from Brennan Johnson and James Maddison. But everything changed in 18 mad second half minutes as Yankuba Minteh, Georginio Rutter and Danny Welbeck lefts the visitors shell shocked with a rapid fire turnaround to leave the former Celtic boss reeling and angry with what he’d just seen from his side.
Postecoglou branded the second half display from his stars “unacceptable” and accused them of just “accepting their fate” just a week after rolling Man Utd over 3-0 at Old Trafford. “Disappointing,” he told Sky Sports. “Frustrated and absolutely gutted with that. Worst defeat we’ve since I’ve been here. Unacceptable second half. Weren’t anywhere near where we should be. Maybe we got carried away with how we were going.
“In the second-half we kind of accepted our fate and it is hard to understand as we’ve not done that while I’ve been here. We’ve usually fought for everything. When you don’t you pay the price, and we paid the price.
“Maybe things were travelling along too smoothly. Football and life will trip you up if you get too far ahead of yourself. That’s what it looked like to me in the second-half.”
Asked what the message was to the squad after the game, he replied: “There is no message. It is a terrible loss for us – as bad as it gets. There’s only one way to fix it and that’s my responsibility. We lost all our duels, we weren’t competitive and if you’re not competitive it is not going to work.
“They all go international duty the majority of them. They will process it individually and I will process it when everyone gets back.”