(Reuters) – Tottenham Hotspur head coach Ange Postecoglou is solely focused on the task at hand and not getting distracted by the Premier League table at this stage of the season, he said after his side came back from behind to crush Aston Villa 4-1 on Sunday.
Two second-half goals from new signing Dominic Solanke and a sublime James Maddison free kick helped the home side make a comeback and overwhelm sixth-placed Villa, who were on a seven-match unbeaten run in the league.
Spurs climbed to seventh in the league on 16 points, two fewer than Villa.
“Yeah potentially, I don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” Postecoglou told reporters when asked if there is a more open field for Champions League qualification spots this campaign.
“But it looks like there’s a lot more congestion in terms of the field itself. Some of that I think is just the attrition rate of players at the moment, which is making it hard for teams to get into smooth water, so to speak.
“The table is only important for me at the end of the year. While we’re running in the race, I don’t like looking either side of me.
“I keep saying to the players: if I was a race-horse, and I’m not, it would be one with blinkers. I’m just looking at the finish line.”
Spurs’ struggles to defend set-pieces continued when Villa’s Morgan Rogers poked home from a yard out after Lucas Digne’s corner was flicked on into the six-yard box.
“Yeah, look, we conceded from a set-piece. I know I’m on my own on this, I don’t like them. To me… it looks like a (rugby) scrum. I just don’t think that’s what football’s about,” he said.
“But it’s part of football these days, where you can just drop the ball in the box and people can fight over it. So disappointing for us to concede from that, but in general I thought we handled their set pieces really well.
“It was great for us to score another one again from an attacking set piece, we’re scoring goals from different areas, that’s important.”
(Reporting by Pearl Josephine Nazare in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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