Toby - disappointed, but we must look ahead

Toby Alderweireld could not hide his bitter disappointment following our 2-1 defeat to Burnley on Saturday, but he admits our focus now has to move on swiftly to what is a big week ahead.

Over the next eight days we face three huge fixtures.

We begin with a trip to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea on Wednesday night before the test of Arsenal in the north London derby at Wembley on Saturday.

Then, a week on Tuesday, we will be in Germany to take on Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League in the return leg of our round of 16 tie.

But first, in the shadow of Saturday’s frustration, Toby is expecting an immediate response to the Turf Moor setback - starting against the Blues.

“We have to pick ourselves up now,” our number four admitted. “Of course, there is disappointment, but I think the team has shown over the last couple of years that we bounce back from disappointing results.

“It’s not like we played badly or something in the game. So, of course, the result was disappointing, but we have to get the negatives out of our heads, get our heads together and show people a different performance on Wednesday.

“We have three big games ahead, we will look forward to them and we will be ready.”

It was a tough defeat to take in Lancashire as, even though we had managed to quickly restore parity through Harry Kane after going behind mid-way through the second half, we would go on to lose late on through Ashley Barnes’ close-range effort.

While it was only the third time in this Premier League campaign that we have failed to pick up maximum points on the road, Belgian international Toby was still left extremely frustrated as he felt our display warranted much more.

“I don’t think we deserved to lose,” the defender explained. “I’m not going to talk about Burnley and how they played. If we had put in a little more quality today, we could have won - unfortunately, we didn’t.

“I don’t think we conceded a lot of chances. We were just very unlucky with the second goal because I think if they hadn’t scored that, we could have gone on to win.”