Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp feels his side need to start becoming a little bit more patient if they want to secure Champions League qualification.
Spurs boss says his players 'huffed and puffed' too much
Tottenham boss Harry Redknapp feels his side need to start becoming a little bit more patient if they want to secure Champions League qualification for next season.
The North London outfit crashed out of the Premier League top three for the first time in more than three months despite Rafael van der Vaart's 93rd-minute equaliser sparing them a fourth straight defeat.
Cameron Jerome looked to have secured a first ever double for Stoke over Tottenham, but the Dutchman snatched a point for the hosts, who will need to improve massively to secure a top-four spot that for so long looked theirs for the taking.
"Stoke are never an easy team to beat," Redknapp told
Sky Sports. "They were solid and you know I said before the game, we had to be careful from set-plays and we got punished from a set-play.
"I really couldn't see us scoring because we huffed and puffed and hit the bar with Gareth (Bale), but I was thankful in the end with that goal.
"I mean, we all want three points at home but maybe a point will be important at the end of the day but we just seemed to have lost our way a bit.
"We're not playing with quite the same fluency that we were a few weeks ago. It's difficult to put your finger on it really but we just don't seem to be shifting the ball around like we did.
Jaded
"One or two of us look a little bit off the pace, a little bit jaded but you know we go to Chelsea on Saturday for a big game, so we have to pick ourselves up again and we have to go there and try and get a result.
"They've got to be more patient. They get carried away with the crowd at times and started playing from back to front to quick. We're a footballing team that plays and people have got to be patient. They can't worry about the crowd being impatient because we had lots of passes.
"You can't lump the ball forward against Stoke because they have two centre-halves who are good in the air. We had to just be patient. With 30 minutes to go, we just panicked a bit and started playing too quick."
