Tottenham Hotspur continued their roller-coaster start to their 2024-25 campaign with yet another defeat against AFC Bournemouth at Vitality Stadium in the Premier League on Thursday night with a late kickoff and Dejan Kulusevski has expressed his frustrations with the situation in the aftermath of the fixture.
This is the Lilywhites sixth defeat of the ongoing season as they continue to struggle to put out consistent results.
Kulusevski expresses frustration after Bournemouth defeat
Spurs wide forward Dejan Kulusevski has come out vocally after yesterday’s defeat about the club’s struggles with defending set pieces, especially corners (something that has been a difference between win and loss for Ange Postecoglou’s side on multiple occasions this season). Speaking in the aftermath of yesterday’s defeat (via BBC), Kulusevski said:
“It is not good enough. We conceded again on a corner and then everything gets much more difficult. Too many times this year we have conceded easy goals on corners.
“Second half we came out much better and made some chances but we did not score and then lost the game. We are so disappointed to lose again.
“We are not good enough in certain aspects, especially as I said on corners. We concede a lot that way and then it is difficult to play when you are 1-0 down. Three days and then we have another game against Chelsea, so we focus on that and move on.
“Of course there is stuff that we have to work on. You can see it in the result but also in the performance. Something is missing and it is up to us players because nobody else will help us to solve it.
“I think then we played good for the first 25 minutes of the second half. In the first half they had more intensity, we let them have too much ball, we did not press enough and they won too many duels.
“Against good teams we always play good, so I expect Sunday will be another good performance. Then we need to look forward and improve on the details we are lacking.”
Tottenham’s first-choice goalkeeper did face a fair share of criticism for his irregularities with defending corners; however, with Fraser Forster in goal yesterday, we need to start asking whether this is more of a Tottenham problem or a goalkeeping problem.
The ongoing struggles with defending set pieces (especially corners) have started to become a thing of worry for Tottenham, and it’s clear that this has been a consistent problem throughout the season. While criticism has often been aimed at Spurs’ goalkeeper (Vicario till his injury), particularly for his handling of corners, the broader problem seems to be a lack of collective defensive organisation from the corners.
As Kulusevski insists, Spurs need to find a way out of this, or they can lose games from corners, which can turn out to be a frustrating affair.
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Do you think Spurs defending from corners is a weakness? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.