Securing Champions League football next season is not Tottenham’s end goal, Ange Postecoglou declared after his side’s humbling 3-0 defeat to Fulham.
Spurs headed to Craven Cottage presented with an opportunity to leapfrog fourth-placed Aston Villa but it was the hosts’ who dented their European pretensions.
Fulham’s in-from striker Rodrigo Muniz had scored five in his last six and duly broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time, bringing Antonee Robinson’s cross from the left under his spell before drilling his shot beyond Guglielmo Vicario.
Meanwhile it was a delivery from the right which undid Spurs on the other side of the interval. Timothy Castagne picked out Sasa Lukic who directed the ball into the far corner with a finish of pure instinct.
Muniz put the game to bed on the hour, stabbing the ball over the line after Calvin Bassey’s effort crashed off a post. It could have been worse as Fulham had a fourth chalked off for offside.
On the performance:
Fulham exacted Spurs’ most punishing defeat of the season just as their visitors’ looked primed to break into the top four after a similarly-emphatic win at Villa Park last weekend.
It was a performance devoid of the energy and intensity that has come to be expected of Spurs under Postecoglou, who admitted his side were not at their best in his post-match press conference.
He said: “First half was even enough. I thought we had enough of the play, enough of the chances. We conceded a bad goal but there was nothing there that I thought we couldn’t overcome, but [in the] second half, after we conceded the second one [we] just didn’t reach the levels of intensity and tempo we’ve played all year.
“Then, it was very hard for us to get any control in the game, it seemed like we were chasing it the whole time. A disappointing night for us.
“We’re in the position we are because every week we’ve been really, really competitive in every aspect of the game. Even in our losses I’ve always felt like we hit certain markers in terms of our endeavour and competitiveness and I thought it was missing today in the second half, that was disappointing.”
On making the top four
Postecoglou took a dim view of one journalist hinting at frailties in Spurs’ mentality having missed the chance to ascend into the top four with victory at Craven Cottage.
It was a narrative the Spurs boss labelled “meaningless” in the longest response of his press conference.
“I don’t see fourth as a prize,” he said. “This club has finished fourth before, it’s finished second before, it’s reached a Champions League final, so you can throw all sorts of things at it but this club has achieved things. Fourth is not my end goal.”
Make no mistake, Postecoglou is aiming to build an outfit capable of winning silverware as a matter of course. Finishing fourth without meaningful growth is anathema to his long-term plans at Tottenham.
He explained: “Fourth would be great if I feel like we’re growing as a team and we’ve created something that’s going to bring us success next year, but fourth is not our goal, it hasn’t been. It’s not my goal, it certainly isn’t my goal.”
“If we finish fifth and I think we’ve got a team to challenge next year, I won’t be disappointed.”
On ending the scoring streak
In failing to find the back of the net, Spurs’ 39-game league scoring streak came to an abrupt end. It is the club’s joint-longest run and Son Heung-min, Brennan Johnson and Timo Werner missed gilt-edged chances to make the record theirs only.
Yet Postecoglou poured scorn on suggestions that firing blanks at Craven Cottage was cause for concern.
“I don’t think that’s the issue for us,” he said. “It wasn’t about scoring, we could have scored today. It’s really meaningless.
“It’s more about the other things that are really important, that have been really important for us all year, because irrespective of our performance fluctuation, our competitive levels, our ability to stay in games and be really strong in our conviction has been there all the time.
“But this was probably the first game, especially in the second half, where I felt it wasn’t there today. That was the disappointing thing for us.”