Pochettino: Stoke draw felt like a defeat

New Tottenham Hotspur signing Toby Alderweireld has been impressed by the recruitment of Saturday’s opponents Stoke City but remains confident Spurs have too much quality for Mark Hughes’ men.

“It’s true the last two games that we played at White Hart Lane and the Britannia Stadium we lost, but it’s a good opportunity to take our revenge”, Pochettino said of Saturday’s match.

But if Pochettino was embarrassed at removing Kane because he believed the game was won, then he will have been livid at the way his side collapsed.

They were lucky not to fall further behind after 36 minutes when a long pass from Eriksen set Chadli away, but his touch was heavy and he ran the ball harmlessly into the arms of Butland.

– The Potters fought hard for a draw.

Tottenham head to unbeaten Leicester in search of their first win while Stoke will be doing likewise when they travel to Norwich. On to the next one… We need to be happy because, if Manchester United want him, it’s because he’s a great goalkeeper but Hugo is happy here and he has a contract here.

8 – Tottenham have conceded more penalties than any other PL side since the start of last season.

“We need to add some more players to the squad but don’t worry, I think today we deserved to win – it wasn’t a problem about the strikers”.

The one area where Spurs look short of options is up front, Pochettino has made it very clear that Emmanuel Adebayor does not feature in his first team plans this season, while Roberto Soldado has been sold to Villarreal.

“He wanted to play the Euros and after that he needed a holiday and he arrived late to start pre-season”.

“He was exhausted”, Pochettino said.

Lloris returned to the Tottenham starting line-up to make his 100th appearance for the club after the France goalkeeper was confirmed as captain amid speculation over a move to Manchester United, while Ryan Mason replaced Nabil Bentaleb.

“We saw last weekend that the game changed because an individual created something out of nothing”, said Hughes, referring to Philippe Coutinho’s spectacular victor for Liverpool. Just before the hour Hughes called on Stephen Ireland and Joselu – and it worked.

“We had to restrict the likes of Dembele and Eriksen and the space they like to play in but we didn’t really do that in the opening half“.

“At Southampton, Victor Wanyama and [Morgan] Schneiderlin put good pressure on so the opposition didn’t have time to put the ball in the box”.