Andre Villas-Boas says his Tottenham side cannot blame fatigue for their shock 1-0 home defeat to Fulham.
Spurs went into Sunday’s clash at White Hart Lane on the back of an extra time away goals victory in the Europa League against Inter Milan and there were doubts before kick-off among punters who bet on football whether or not they’d be fit enough to compete against the Cottagers.
This prompted AVB to make a number of changes to his side, most notably in defence where he opted to go with Michael Dawson and Steven Caulker as his central partnership, with the versatile Jan Vertonghen moving into midfield.
The changes didn’t really work though, as despite the return of Gareth Bale to the starting line-up, the North Londoners failed to build any sort of momentum in the game and eventually went down to former Lilywhites favourite Dimitar Berbatov’s 52nd minute strike.
The defeat was Tottenham’s second in a row in the league and saw them drop to fourth in the table due to Chelsea’s comfortable 2-0 win over West Ham.
The former Porto boss was understandably unhappy with seeing his side lose on Sunday and says that blaming tiredness due to their European run is not a good enough excuse for their lacklustre display.
“It was difficult and it is two defeats in a row in the Premier League and we wanted to avoid that because we were on a good run,” Villas-Boas said to premier league betting news writers. “We had a decent game, but we couldn’t create as much as we normally create at home offensively.”
“It was one of those defeats we have to reflect on. The desire and effort was there, but things just didn’t go our way in terms of football,” he added.
