Cristian Stellini's verdict on Pompey win
It was a case of ‘job done’ for Cristian Stellini after we progressed to the fourth round of the Emirates FA Cup thanks to a hard-fought 1-0 win in the third round against Portsmouth on Saturday.
Harry Kane provided a magic, match-winning moment on 50 minutes after Pompey proved a tough nut to crack, no doubt inspired by 9,000 travelling fans at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
We dominated throughout against the League One side, who defended resolutely, deep and with numbers, and never lost that defensive discipline for the 90 minutes.
In the end, we had 18 efforts at goal, the one that mattered taking us into Sunday’s draw when Harry drove to the box from the left, exchanged passes with Ryan Sessegnon and curled into the corner from 18 yards – his 265th goal for the Club, moving him to within one of Jimmy Greaves’ all-time Spurs record mark of 266.
“We’ve progressed to the next round and that’s all we wanted,” said Cristian, Antonio Conte’s assistant, speaking to SPURSPLAY afterwards. “We are happy because played a good game, we didn’t risk anything, so it’s an important game for us.
“Portsmouth created a tough game because they were compact, they were tough in the box, and we didn’t have many chances to score in the first half. We had some shots from outside the box, but they were good.
“We know this because when you play this type of game, you have to be good with the ball, most of the game was in our hands and when we found the goal, the space was bigger.”
Asked what impressed him most, Cristian added: “The three central defenders were good, also Pape Sarr and Skippy in the middle, Skippy ran a lot into the box to try to find some solutions, had one great opportunity, was unlucky, but I liked this situation.
“Now, he’s coming back. We know Skippy, in the first three months we were here, he helped us a lot. We want Skippy again, and it’s nice he can play this type of match and we can count on him. We also gave more minutes to Djed Spence, he’s increasing his progression and improving a lot, and we hope we can recover more players.”
We’ve a rare clear week now as we build-up to the north London derby back here in N17 next Sunday (15 January, 4.30pm).