Igor Tudor believes his “life or death” Tottenham Hotspur rescue job is the biggest of his career and has revealed he is ready to try to win ugly to keep the club in the Premier League.
Tottenham are just four points above the relegation zone after their 4-1 defeat by Arsenal in Tudor’s first game as interim head coach.
That gap could be cut to just one point by the time Spurs face Fulham at Craven Cottage on Sunday and nothing Tudor has seen has convinced him that the task will be straightforward.
Tudor has a record of going into clubs and delivering an instant upturn in results, having done so at Juventus, Lazio and Galatasaray midway through league campaigns.
But asked if Spurs represent his biggest rescue job to date, Tudor replied: “Probably, if I see, if I recognise the difficulties there are, probably, yes. It’s even a bigger challenge, even a bigger motivation to do this.”
Asked if his assignment at Tottenham is more difficult than he expected, Tudor added: “Probably yes. I agree with you.”
Tottenham supporters did not take to former head coach Thomas Frank’s pragmatic style and had previously grown frustrated by the perceived negative approaches of Antonio Conte and José Mourinho.
But Tudor admitted that he does not have time to worry about attractive football with only 11 games of the league season remaining and what he described as a “life-or-death” scenario for the club.
“I need to be smart to understand deeper the moment and the way how to take the points,” he said. “Even not looking at the style now at this moment. The style needs to be second at the moment, because now it’s a question of life and death. If I can say that in that way, sportingly. You can use that term.”
Asked if Tottenham will have to win ugly, he said: “Ah, OK, I think, yes. We are working in that direction. In Italy, they use the term, you know, have the mentality of a small team. In Italy that is the key, to always have motivation when you play big teams, so that’s the start of course and we work a lot on that. They [the players] are aware, of course they are aware.”
Telegraph Sport revealed that Tudor has already been ripping into his underperforming players in training and the Croatian confirmed that he does not accept anything less than maximum effort.
“I believe that the mentality changes by training,” Tudor said. “By doing the right things there and then to have enough training sessions that you can transmit this thing to your team that on Sunday this can be seen from the fans in the stadium. So, that’s the key. Hard work in other ways, there is no other possibility.”
Tottenham, who have Pedro Porro and Kevin Danso back from injury, will find out on Friday whether they will play Atlético Madrid or Galatasaray in the last 16 of the Champions League. But Tudor suggested the competition could provide an unhelpful distraction for his injury-hit squad.
“I don’t think too much about the draw,” Tudor said. “It won’t change nothing for me. The problem is the lack of players, the amount of players we have in the team, that is the problem. Because if you need to play every three days with 10, 12, 13 [players], that’s the problem. If we play in the Champions League or not. It’s not only about spending physical energy, but also mental energy. Every game for us in the league, it’s a final. So, it’s not an ideal situation, but it’s how it is.”
Tudor dismissed any suggestion that Micky van de Ven had ignored his instructions during the defeat by Arsenal, saying: “If you watch carefully now, you see that I don’t speak with him. It was all for the defence to go up. We didn’t even speak about this, me and Micky, because there was nothing to speak about. He’s a fantastic guy, a very good professional and he would never do these things.”