Sunday 17 December 2017 09:14, UK
Mauricio Pochettino insists Tottenham must learn from their 4-1 thrashing at Premier League leaders Manchester City and use it to improve their game.
Spurs were firmly second best at the Etihad as Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and a double from Raheem Sterling widened the chasm between the sides to a whopping 21 points.
After Christian Eriksen's solitary goal for his team, Pochettino said: "We need to learn from this situation. Today was a very good example to see a team that believes, that has a lot of quality and strength, and is in very good form.
"They deserved the victory completely. We were poor but, not only that, the way that we conceded the first goal was a massive mistake for us. We need to improve.
"But in the way that we try to play I feel relaxed because we tried; we tried to develop our philosophy, and our idea.
"It's true that the team in front was better than us, but now it's about trying to lift our players for the next game, because now this game is in the past."
Pochettino was asked after the match about a particularly low performance from Dele Alli, who is struggling to recapture his best form for Tottenham this season, but he refused to comment.
"I am not going to talk about individual names today because it is not fair," the Argentine said. "The most important thing is our collective performance and it was not how we expected.
"When you play against teams like Manchester City, if you concede after 14 minutes a goal like this - come on - we cannot assess individual performances.
"After 4-1, we need to be calm, try to talk and next week try to be better."
