Jose Mourinho Blames Defensive Errors For Tottenham’s Downfall Against Everton

Jose Mourinho has criticised Tottenham for their ‘defensive mistakes’ during their FA Cup clash with Everton.

Carlo Ancelotti’s have progressed through to the quarter-final of the Cup after beating Spurs 5-4 at home on Wednesday night.

Mourinho believes Tottenham showed ‘great character’ and ‘created good chances’ during the fifth round tie, but insists ‘attacking football only wins matches when you don’t make more mistakes than you create.’

During the opening 45 minutes at Goodison Park there were five goals, 12 shots on target and an array of sloppy passes.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Richarlison and Gylfi Sigurdsson all scored in the space of seven minutes to give Everton a two-goal advantage. Although, goals from Erik Lamela and Davinson Sanchez levelled the score soon after.

However, it was Tottenham’s sloppy defending in the later stages of the game that left Mourinho frustrated – having let Everton back into the game by allowing Richarlison to score again and conceding Bernard’s late winner after Harry Kane came off the bench to bring Spurs back into the fold.

Speaking after the game Mourinho claims there were aspects of Tottenham’s performance he enjoy, but insists their downfall came from their defensive errors.

He told BBC Sport: ‘If you say it was fantastic, it was fantastic. I’m not a neutral.

‘When you score four goals, you have to win. The way we played, we should win comfortably. Attacking football and defensive mistakes.

‘The players gave everything. I have to admit for some of them it was not easy because you play so well and one, two, three mistakes and you’re losing 3-1.

‘OK, I take positives. Amazing to watch.’

He added: ‘We created, we had great movement, we scored goals, created chances. Showed great character to fight against incredible mistakes.

‘But attacking football only wins matches when you don’t make more mistakes than you create. We scored four goals and it was not enough.

‘It hurts everyone. The feeling is we played really well with the ball, we were brave, we were the best team at 1-0 and in five minutes it was mistake, mistake, mistake, goal, goal, goal.

‘We fought back again but had more mistakes. It was the mouse and the cat. The mouse was our mistakes and the cat was us trying to compensate for that.’