Wright hits out at Tottenham display against Ipswich: ‘I don’t mean that disrespectfully’
Arsenal legend Ian Wright has criticised the inconsistency shown by Tottenham but admits that he now expects that from Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Pressure on Postecoglou reached a high at the end of October when Spurs lost 1-0 to Crystal Palace in the Premier League with Postecoglou’s men struggling to climb the table.
Since then they have beaten defending Premier League champions Manchester City in the League Cup and hammered Aston Villa 4-1 in the league – but Tottenham and Postecoglou are now under pressure again after back-to-back losses against Galatasaray and Ipswich Town last week.
Tottenham went 2-0 behind against the newly-promoted Tractor Boys on Sunday with Sammie Szmodics and Liam Delap scoring two first-half goals.
Spurs came back into the match in the second half through a Rodrigo Bentancur header, while they had a goal disallowed for hand ball, but they didn’t have enough as they lost 2-1 to Kieran McKenna’s side.
And former Arsenal striker Wright insists it’s what he expects from Tottenham nowadays with Spurs often following up a good display with a poor one.
Wright said at half-time on Premier League Productions: “This is Spurs and what they do, I don’t mean that disrespectfully. When they are in a good run and you think they can put more results together, they throw a performance like this out there.”
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Speaking after the match, Postecoglou was unhappy at his side’s first-half performance, he said: “It was hugely disappointing and, from my perspective, unacceptable, because we started the game nowhere near the levels we needed to be and gave ourselves a mountain to climb.
“In the second half, we had the ascendancy and enough opportunities to get the job done, but we didn’t do enough with it.”
Postecoglou added: “We were far too passive without the ball, allowed them to feel comfortable, and that’s what we don’t want to do when we’re at home, especially, and we paid a price for that.”
On Ipswich trying to slow the game down and disrupt the flow of the game, Postecoglou contiunued: “It’s part of the Premier League now. Clubs are strategically doing it. You can almost work by your clock that every 20 minutes, someone will go down, and they’ll come over and get instructions from the coach.
“If we want to overcome that, we have to make sure that we don’t give opposition teams the opportunity to get ahead in games and try to kill it, then we can control that. It’s up to the officials to work out.”