Leicester 2-1 Spurs - Mauricio's reaction

Mauricio Pochettino wasn’t pulling any punches after our 2-1 defeat at Leicester - and laid the blame for the loss firmly at the door of our first half performance.

Goals from Jamie Vardy on 13 minutes and Riyad Mahrez in first half added time left us with it all to do at the King Power Stadium.

We’d dominated possession throughout and laid siege to the home goal in the final 25 minutes but only had Harry Kane’s goal to show for it. Fernando Llorente and Christian Eriksen missed chances either side of that strike as we slipped to defeat.

The only bright spot was the return of Erik Lamela after 13 months on the sidelines with a hip injury. He looked lively off the bench on 77 minutes and took just 80 seconds to provide the assist for Harry’s goal.

Mauricio was as disappointed as we’ve seen him in a long time in the tunnel area of the KP afterwards.

“I'm very disappointed with the performance in the first half, it was so poor,” he said. “You need to compete, you need to fight first of all, then play football. You cannot play football if you don't compete and fight in the Premier League. That's why we're so disappointed.

“It's true the game was open and we had chances to score, maybe to draw, maybe to win the game but in the end, the result was against us because of the first half. It's an example that in football, you need to respect yourself, compete and then play.

“You can work on different systems and tactics, actions, set-pieces, everything around football but if we are poor like we were as a team in the way we played (in the first half) then it’s my responsibility first to try to talk and discover why we played in this way.

“If we want to win games we need to change. We need to change and start stronger from the beginning. We can’t afford like Dortmund, West Brom and today to always start 1-0 down. Why? That is the problem. We need to be strong from the beginning.”

As for Lamela’s return, Mauricio added: “For him and the team it’s so positive and it’s important because he has quality that can help us a lot.”