Toiling Spurs falling down

Europa League: Pochettino fears team’s confidence has taken tumble

After Liverpool ended their 11-game unbeaten run with a 2-0 Premier League win at Anfield at the weekend, an out-of-sorts Spurs were dealt a blow in another competition when they were beaten 1- 0 at Gent in the Europa League last-32 first leg last night.

Veteran French forward Jeremy Perbet scored the winner for the Belgians just before the hour mark, shortly after Spurs attacker Harry Kane had struck the outside of a post and teammate Mousa Dembele scuffed wide when well placed.

Perbet, 32, made them pay for those misses and Pochettino said: “Until the Liverpool gamewewere on a good run.

“It’s true that maybe our confidence has dropped a little bit, but this game was a differentcompetition and we tried to win the game, we tried to find the way to score goals.

“We had some clear chances to scoreandweare disappointed because we had a lot of opportunities, two or three very clear, before we conceded a goal.

“It’s true that maybe it was not a good performance. It wasn’t the best game, but we created chances to try to score but we cannot score.”

Spurs will try to overturn the deficit in next week’s second leg at Wembley.

Pochettino added: “The tie is opennow. It’s not only 90 minutes, it’s two games and that was the first leg.

“This isafantasticopportunity for us to try to put pressure on the opponent and then to demonstrate thatwe can win andwecan play well at Wembley.”

BREAKTHROUGH: Gent’s Jeremy Perbet celebrates his second-half goal