Ange Postecoglou is holding his press conference after Tottenham drew 1-1 on Eintracht Frankfurt in their Europa League quarter-final first leg on Thursday.
The Europa League offers the chance for Postecoglou and his Spurs players to salvage their stuttering campaign but they came up against tricky opposition in Frankfurt, with the Bundesliga outfit having dispatched Dutch giants Ajax with little fuss to advance from the round of 16.
The German side opened the scoring after just six minutes when Hugo Ekitike struck a low shot into the bottom right corner from outside the box following a break up the pitch after James Maddison was dispossessed in the visitors' half.
Pedro Porro scored a terrific equaliser on 26 minutes. A ball from Son Heung-min over the top found Dominic Solanke's run. The striker found Maddison who jinked past his man and played the ball across the six-yard box where Porro back-flicked it through the defender's legs and into the net with his heel.
Spurs had a string of opportunities in the second half with Lucas Bergvall and Rodrigo Bentancur both hitting the crossbar and Son and Maddison forcing the keeper into saves before Micky van de Ven had a late bouncing header tipped over, but they could not find a second goal to take to Germany.
Our Spurs correspondent Alasdair Gold is among those putting the questions to Postecoglou. Scroll down for his latest updates from the press conference at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Here's every word Postecoglou said
We've got a full transcript with every word the Spurs boss said which you can find by heading right here.
The Tottenham head coach on Lucas Bergvall
He was great but the whole team was. I thought Rodri was outstanding. Both full-backs defensively and with the ball were really causing problems. Cuti and Micky handled their front threats really well apart from the goal we conceded which was the only disappointing bit. The front three were working with Madders and were really creative. You can’t ask any more from the lads than what the lads did, especially in that second half to create that many chances. We don’t get the win but I can’t ask any more from the players.
The Spurs boss on Destiny Udogie
Yeah he just got cramp. He was unbelievable today. I thought it was incredible the amount of running he did. His effectiveness. It was incredible. He was just cramping up. He will be fine.
Postecoglou on that final chance for Van de Ven
I'm resigned to the fact that the football gods have got their eyes elsewhere this year. They're obviously busy with other clubs and other managers so whatever we get we're going to have to do it without them this year.
Postecoglou is here
A little bit frustrated by the result obviously but I thought the performance in general was really good from the boys. We conceded early which was not ideal and it was a fair strike by the lad but I thought our response to that was really good. We stayed in control. We scored a good equaliser. We made them work hard in the first half so we knew in the second half, with our ability to break teams open, we would put them under pressure. It is exactly what happened and the boys did everything right. I couldn't ask for anything more from them.
We hit the crossbar three times, their keeper has made some amazing saves. We had a couple of other good opportunities as well. On any other night we would have a comfortable victory. If we can perform like that over there, and there is no reason why we can't, then we still give ourselves a good chance.
