Hugo Lloris: 'We've started in the best way'

Hugo Lloris put his pride at leading the team out as captain in the first game at our new stadium to one side for a moment to emphasise: “We needed this win.”

Our French international goalkeeper enjoyed a clean sheet as the curtain went up on our world-class new facilities with a 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace on Wednesday, ending a run of four defeats and a draw in our last five Premier League games.

For Hugo, the sense of satisfaction after the match was two-fold.

“The main thing, first of all, is the three points – we need to put the context out,” he said. “In the league there are six games to go, four at home and we need to get maximum points.

“Then we can talk about the stadium. It’s an amazing feeling to play here. It’s a new chapter in Tottenham’s history and we’ve started it in the best way, with a win, which was important after the bad moments we had last month. To start with a good feeling, to have a clean sheet, it’s all positive now and we keep going.”

Hugo is one of numerous players previously quoted as saying how much he was looking forward to moving into the new ground. So, did Wednesday night meet his expectations?

“I think it met the expectation of the players and the fans,” he said. “We’ve all waited so long for the first game ever in the new stadium and we did the job, we made everyone happy but we need to keep going because every game until the end of the season will be decisive and important in the top four race.

“When you have this type of facilities, the stadium and the training ground, and when you have fans like Spurs fans, you need to be up there every season. Of course, you cannot create success in three years, we need time and we need to build something very strong but we are in a good way, even if we have ups and downs like every top team. It’s important to stay strong with unity until the end of the season and get into the top four.”

As far as the game went, second-half goals from Heung-Min Son and Christian Eriksen gave us the points against the Eagles, although Hugo was called upon in the latter stages to make some crucial saves.

“They had a few chances at the end of the game,” the stopper admitted. “When we scored the second goal we could have managed the end of the game better but we made so much effort to be in that position that we dropped a little bit in terms of intensity and aggression and Palace tried to get something from that.

“But we played in a very good way with good concentration and good focus. There was a little bit of nervousness at the beginning but we took control of the game early and of course it was just about the final decision, the final shot, final pass but we had a lot of situations and it’s very positive.”