After taking the lead early against Stade Rennais FC in their UEFA Europa Conference League, Tottenham Hotspur conceded two straight goals as they found themselves a 2-1 hole late in the match.
With a little over 20 minutes remaining in the fixture, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg would rescue his team, scoring late in the match. Despite not starting, the 26-year-old did come off the bench and was the hero that the north London-based club needed to help rescue a point in Rennes.
Following the 2-2 draw, manager Nuno Espírito Santo, where he Football.London relayed his comments regarding his teams’ performance in France Thursday night.
“Was not perfect. I think we started very well in possession, finding good lines. We scored, then we lost a little bit of control. Rennes is a good team; they caused some problems for us. It is hard to judge all the game with all the circumstances that happened during the game,” Nuno said.
“But I think we finished well; we showed a lot of character and belief to change the result after we conceded. In the end, I think we were in control. A hard team to play, a hard pitch to play, but the attitude was good… a lot of players out of position, so it is hard to analyze and be fair.”
Tottenham will need to turn the page on these dropped points as they’ll have their biggest test early in the Premier League season when they welcome the reigning UEFA Champions League winners in Chelsea to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Spurs did secure a victory over Manchester City to open up the 2021-22 campaign, and they’ll look for a similar result this weekend.
I think Rennes were good last night, I was impressed by some of their play- and don’t give me the old “we made them look good” schtick, they came out fighting and the crowd got behind it – fair play to them.
I dunno, for me. we weren’t horribly ‘shout at the TV’ bad, but just another standard mediocre spurs performance that went nowhere fast, devoid of too much one might class as “excitement” – from a spurs point of view anyway. The quality in the final third for us at the moment is dreadful.
Keeper: Poor
Centre halfs: Ok
Fullbacks: wastes of space
Centre mid: Boring
Attacking mid: going nowhere
Harry: needs some service
Dane: needs a goal
Nuno: Needs to have a long hard think about whether Hoj and Skipp are the long term answer.