Jose Mourinho slept at Tottenham’s training ground in order to prepare for Saturday’s game with Burnley and has told his players to stop wallowing in disappointment following a defeat.
Spurs boss Mourinho felt the dressing room was engulfed in sadness after his 100 per cent start was ended by Wednesday’s 2-1 loss at former club Manchester United.
Having flown back from Old Trafford, he spent the night at Hotspur Way in Enfield attempting to plot a swift return to winning ways against Sean Dyche’s Clarets.
Mourinho has ordered his squad to respond to the first setback of his tenure in a proactive manner by harnessing anger and rage, rather than feeling sorry for themselves.
“After a defeat you cannot be sad. You have to be more than that. You have to be raging, angry, not sad,” said the 56-year-old.
“Sad is grief. It’s death. When you lose somebody, you have to be sad, you have to be grieving, you have to be crying.
“There is no solution against that, you lost that person. A football match, you lose one, tomorrow there is another one.
“You keep moving and growing and learn from the mistake and don’t accept the defeat as an empty word. Accept defeat as a learning process, next game, work the next day.
“I slept in here (the training ground), I stayed here, I didn’t go home, so the next morning at eight o’clock I was here doing what? Burnley.
“Analysing Burnley, trying to organise the training session, trying to organise the meeting, choosing the clips to show them the most clear possible way Burnley works.
“That’s the way you have to do it in football. Don’t accept in a passive way.”
Back home against Burnley.— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) December 6, 2019
Defeat against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s United side was Tottenham’s fifth from 15 top-flight games during an unconvincing start to the season which has left them nine points adrift of the top four.
It followed successive league victories over West Ham and Bournemouth, in addition to progression to the knockout stages of the Champions League, as life under Mourinho began brightly following the sacking of Mauricio Pochettino.
A hectic schedule has left the Portuguese coach with limited time to work with his players on the training ground.
The former Chelsea and Manchester United boss, who is eager to tighten up defensively after conceding twice in each of his four matches to date, hopes to eventually instigate a change of mentality.
The #PL top 2️⃣0️⃣ pic.twitter.com/4cGccvS2t4— Premier League (@premierleague) December 5, 2019
“These players, they need this kind of message, they need this kind of (mentality), ‘OK, I don’t accept defeat. Defeat is something that doesn’t belong to my culture’,” he said.
“Unfortunately, we cannot work on the pitch. The training session yesterday was phenomenal but it was a training session with the players that didn’t play against United.
“We need time to work but I cannot stop the league now and say, ‘OK, one month of pre-season’ and I am going to take them to Dubai for a month. We cannot do it, we have to play.
“We have to resolve our problems step by step. It’s obvious we have problems but we have players with quality, a great human dressing room.
“I like the guys very much but we need to change that feeling of feeling sorry about our mistakes and feeling sad with our bad results.”
Spurs remain without injured goalkeepers Hugo Lloris and Michel Vorm this weekend, in addition to defender Ben Davies and winger Erik Lamela.
