TOTTENHAM
TOTTENHAM found out the hard way last night that even if you pick your fi rst- choice goalkeeper, there are no guarantees he will not throw one into the back of the net.
That is not to suggest that Hugo Lloris’s failure to keep out Monaco substitute Stephan El Shaarawy’s downward header was anything like the clanger suffered by Arsenal’s reserve goalkeeper David Ospina on Tuesday night against Olympiakos.
It is just that Tottenham fans have got so used to their captain pulling off last- gasp saves to keep their noses in front that seeing the ball hit his shins and then somehow scramble over his body just nine minutes from time comes as something of a shock.
Especially as, in a European week in which Arsene Wenger’s team selection has been picked apart by all and sundry, Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino played his strongest team and so nearly came away with a classic European away win.
“We need to review the goal and I haven’t seen it yet on the laptop, but I don’t know if it was a mistake,” he said. “I think Hugo is an unbelievable goalkeeper but it was diffi cult from my position to know if we made some mistakes.
“In football this happens. The way they score is the only way they can score. One cross and we concede the goal. In the end it is a good result but the feeling is bad because we dominated. We need to learn about football because we had a chance to create more opportunities than we did.
“We are a young squad and we need to learn. At 1- 0 it is always a diffi cult score to manage. Our philosophy is always about going forward and attacking football and it’s always better to score two or three goals than only defend the result.
“We needed to be more clinical in front of goal. At 1- 0 up you need to kill the game off and we had the chance because in the second half we had the opportunities.
“Overall the feeling is we lost two points.”
The late disappointment was a sharp contrast to what was felt in the 35th minute when Erik Lamela continued his