Pochettino: West Ham match was “must win” for Spurs

Nemanja Matic promised to buy Slaven Bilic dinner if West Ham handed Chelsea a massive boost in the title race by beating Tottenham.

Spurs will continue fighting for the Premier League title despite last night’s defeat against West Ham, according to manager Mauricio Pochettino. “When we conceded it was so hard to come back in the game”. “It is disappointing with the result, now we wait for the Chelsea result then it’s three games ahead to play”, he told Sky Sports.

Fans will be hoping Tottenham can add in key areas this summer, as we all know blockbuster transfers can work wonders to create excitement in and around the club.

He added he felt his side had learned and improved from a year ago, but they needed to show they were worthy of being champions, adding: “Today was one of those key moments”.

It’s insane to say that Spurs, after nine wins in a row, has to win a game. As we saw with the loss to Manchester United or with Spurs’ loss just now, good teams can have bad games, too.

It was feisty, a Friday feist-night summed up in one first-half statistic: West Ham attempted no fewer than 16 tackles and succeeded in just one of them.

Adrian’s busiest period of the match came midway through the first half.

Pochettino sent on Mousa Dembele and Vincent Janssen in an attempt to rouse his side but they remained scrambled.

Tottenham’s despair was in stark contrast to West Ham who not only put a huge dent in their local rivals’ hopes of a first title since 1961, but also guaranteed their own safety.

Spurs battled to find a way back, but were given a fright when the home team almost doubled their lead on 75 minutes.

Spurs keeper Hugo Lloris charged out of his area to challenge Lanzini in the 27th minute and was relieved to see Cheikhou Kouyate’s lobbed follow-up squirt behind.

Dele Alli’s follow-up was blocked back to Kane on the edge of the area and the Tottenham striker looked certain to score, yet once again he was denied as Adrian’s out-stretched leg deflected it over.

Now Tottenham is looking down again, holding an eight-point lead over Liverpool with three games to go.