Chelsea manager Maurizio Sarri was quick to lavish plenty of praise on Tottenham Hotspur after the two sides met at Wembley in the Premier League.
Spurs handed the Blues their first league defeat of the season with the 3-1 victory. The goals came from Dele Alli, Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son and Mauricio Pochettino’s side had enough chances to more than double the scoreline.
Chelsea were sloppy in possession throughout the encounter and Sarri admitted they had chosen the wrong opponents to be so generous with and that Pochettino’s tactics had surprised him.
“It was clear in the first five minutes of the match that it was very difficult to use Jorginho as usual. We had to try to move the ball through the midfield to the opposite full-back,” he said.
“That was the only way to have one or two seconds to play the ball. We were surprised because they usually play with a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3, but today they played with the 4-3-1-2.
“But after five minutes it was a very clear situation. We had in the first 25 or 30 minutes a lot of problems to exit our own half, we lost a lot of balls.
“Against Tottenham that is very dangerous to lose the ball in your half, because in the short counter attacks they are maybe one of the strongest teams in Europe. So it was a disaster after 20 minutes, 2-0 was the minimum.”
On his later substitutions, he added: “I had to do something different to try to change the match, but it wasn’t important. Today they were better than us 11 out of 11, so it was not important. I wanted to change the match with something different, but I think I could have changed 11 players with the same result.”
