Tottenham round-up: Spurs ‘can forget about title’ says pundit; Lloris talks up Europa League; Poch eyes move for Monaco teenager

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Tottenham’s run of nine Premier League games unbeaten came grinding to a halt on Saturday, after a Sadio Mane brace condemned Mauricio Pochettino’s men to a 2-0 defeat at Anfield. Despite Chelsea also dropping points at Burnley, the gap between Spurs and the Blues is now at ten points, with just two points lying between Pochettino’s side and sixth-place Manchester United.

For current BBC pundit and former Tottenham player Garth Crooks, the scenario was enough for him to declare that the North Londoners should forget about winning the title if they cannot hold their own at out-of-form sides like Liverpool.

“I don’t know what it is about Spurs and Anfield but they have only won there eight times in 81 league visits. What’s that about?”, Crooks wrote in his weekly Team of the Week column on BBC Sport.

“The person responsible on this occasion for continuing Tottenham’s dismal record against Liverpool was Sadio Mane. But, more remarkably, the team with one of the best defensive records in the league suddenly looked like a unit that had never played together before.

“Spurs fans can forget league titles if their team can’t go to Anfield and get a result… Chelsea did,” he added.

Crooks’ comments followed Pochettino’s own assessment of his team’s performance on Merseyside, in which he questioned his team’s lack of desire and labelled them ‘incapable’ of holding their nerve in the title race, despite not admitting that they were out of the running.

“We are in a position that is up to us,” he told the London Evening Standard.

“But if you show like today that you cannot cope with the pressure to play to win the league than it is difficult to challenge and fight for the Premier League. In the first 45 minutes, you saw a team that is not ready to fight for the Premier League.”

For the meantime though, league action and the title race will be very much off the agenda with the return of European football and of course the fifth round of the FA Cup this month. Their FA Cup tie with Fulham lies sandwiched between the away and home legs of a Europa League Round-of-32 tie with Belgian club Ghent, and Tottenham goalkeeper Hugo Lloris believes that their exploits in Europe could help the side discover a winning mentality that will aid them in their quest for silverware.

Tottenham will travel to Ghent for the first-leg of their Europa League Round of 32 on Thursday, with no Premier League fixtures until February 26th when they return to domestic action at home to Stoke. It will be fascinating to discover which competition Pochettino decides to prioritise, having already spoken of the importance of the Europa League, yet seemingly put domestic exploits first this season.

The Argentine has developed a reputation for rotating his side ahead of European ties, suggesting that European competition takes a back-seat compared to the Premier League, but Lloris it seems is an advocate of ensuring the club’s senior players get to enjoy European action for the experience it provides, which may then have positive repercussions on their domestic form.

Speaking to the London Evening Standard, Lloris said: “Before thinking about the title, we need to think about the teams behind us in the table, because they are all top clubs with top players and they are used to fighting for the top four and for trophies. 

“We need to have ambitions in both the Europa League and FA Cup because it is important to feel this kind of pressure. We are young and need to feel the pressure of these games to improve. We have plenty of young players with a lot of talent but we need to go through these kinds of situations because you can’t buy experience. You need to face these situations, live them.”

“The Europa League is a top competition. We would like to have still been in the Champions League, but we still need to enjoy this competition. We have a status: we are Tottenham. We need to show that in every competition we are involved in.”

Meanwhile, there is some news to report on the transfer front, with the Daily Mirror reporting that Mauricio Pochettino is weighing-up a summer move for Monaco youngster Kylian Mbappe.

The 18-year-old has been touted as the ‘next Thierry Henry’ and has 11 goals for the principality club this season in all competitions, including a hat-trick in Monaco’s 5-0 rout of Metz in Ligue 1 over the weekend. The addition of the youngster would add some much-needed pace and youthfulness to Mauricio Pochettino’s forward-line, but any move may command a fee in the region of or exceeding the £36million that Manchester United paid for Anthony Martial, another of Monaco’s youth prodigies, back in 2015.

Mbappe’s current contract with the Ligue 1 leaders is set to run until 2019, and he is also being monitored by Spurs’ bitter rivals Arsenal, with Arsene Wenger a keen admirer.

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