NUNO TAKES SWIPE AT PLAYERS
NUNO ESPIRITO SANTO appeared to take a swipe at his players following their crushing loss to Arsenal, despite trying to shoulder blame for the feeble defeat. The Spurs boss claimed he picked the wrong starting XI for yesterday’s North London derby after watching his side lurch towards crisis courtesy of a 3-1 loss, the club’s third successive Premier League defeat. Nuno, who substituted Dele Alli and Japhet Tanganga at half-time, was at pains not to openly criticise his players afterwards — but did suggest he would direct home truths at his underperforming stars following the painful loss. ‘The performance was not good, the game plan was not good, the decisions were not good, it was not a good day for us, definitely not a good day,’ he said. ‘A lot of things went wrong, starting with the decision that I made. I will not judge my players in front of you, I refuse to do that. ‘I decided bad, I didn’t take the right decisions. I won’t go further that that — whatever I have to say I will say it directly to the players. ‘I’m going to be honest with you, when you have a game plan, you have to make the right decisions in terms of who you want to put on the pitch to develop the plan. The decisions were not according to the game plan. ‘I’m not going to individually tell you what decisions I didn’t do right but the game plan was not according to the players on the pitch.’ When asked whether the players didn’t carry out his instructions, Nuno added: ‘That’s another issue. I will not say they are not doing what I’m telling them to do. They were not able to do it. Credit to the opponent, because they were better than us. ‘We are disappointed. It was a special game for all of us and we didn’t achieve the standard our fans deserve.’ In contrast, Mikel Arteta enjoyed one of his best days as Arsenal manager as the Gunners continued to improve following a poor start to the season. However, there were growing concerns last night over a seriouslooking knee injury sustained by midfielder Granit Xhaka in an accidental collision with Tottenham forward Lucas Moura. Arteta added: ‘It’s not about winning but the way we’ve done it, against a top team — on the most special day of the season against our rivals. Today is one example of what we’re trying to do. Now we have to be consistent, do it better. This win is for the fans. They’ve been incredible in tough moments when we needed their support, and it doesn’t get much better than the atmosphere today. When you are trying to rebuild, you have to stay by your values. Now we are creating the connection with our supporters. ‘We started really strong, really convincingly, determined. It’s probably one of the best games I’ve seen us play for that first half. In the second half we had to do what we had to do.’ On Xhaka’s injury, Arteta added: ‘It doesn’t look good.’