Jose Mourinho has now won both of his first two games as Tottenham head coach, but he hasn’t been overly happy with their performances.
Spurs beat West Ham 3-2 on Sunday after going into three-goal lead, and were two down to Olympiakos in the Champions League on Tuesday.
Dele Alli, who was on target in north London last night, has now revealed what Mourinho said at half time, despite his goal that made it 2-1 just before the break.
He said: “We did not start nowhere near good enough and we said at half-time we could not perform any worse.
“I got the goal, which was a bit lucky, but we won.
“We were losing and the manager made the decision to bring on a more forward thinking player [in Christian Eriksen].
“It could have been any of us to come off in that first 20 minutes but thankfully the sub worked.”
Eric Dier was hauled off after just 28 minutes by Mourinho as he tried to change the dynamic of the match after Youssef El-Arabi and Ruben Semedo had found the back of the net, a decision which the former Chelsea and Manchester United boss felt the need to apologise for.
“The first thing that was the most difficult moment for me was not the goals but the change I had to make,” he said.
“It hurt the player but also hurt me.
“It’s important the player understood and I was fortunate that it was a very intelligent boy who understood it was about the team not the performance.
“I felt another creative midfielder in that open triangle was needed rather than the closed triangle with Eric.
“I apologised to Eric and made it clear I didn’t do it to hurt him. Christian gave us what we needed at that time.”
Harry Kane netted twice after the break either side of Serge Aurier’s rasping drive had handed Spurs the lead for the first time.
That victory sae Spurs progress safely into the knockout stages of the competition, taking pressure off of the trip to play Bayern Munich in December.