Antonio Conte wants his Tottenham Hotspur players to take any positives they can from their north London derby defeat to Arsenal as they move on quickly to face Eintracht Frankfurt on Tuesday.
A 3-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium saw Spurs lose their first Premier League game of the season, the visitors outplayed for large parts of the game and undone by a red card for Emerson Royal.
The scores had been level at that stage, Harry Kane’s penalty – his 14th north London derby goal in 18 appearances – cancelling out Thomas Partey’s superb opener for Arsenal.
Now Spurs travel to Germany for what could be a crunch Champions League fixture, Conte’s side having lost their last Group D clash against Sporting.
“We have to play every three days, and we have to move on,” said Conte.
“We are trying to do our best, we’ll continue to do this and now we have to move on quickly because on Tuesday, we have an important game.
“We have to take some positivity from this game and understand that we have to continue to work to improve.”
With Saturday’s game finely-poised, Conte fumed at the decision to dismiss Royal, claiming Premier League referees need to improve the standard of how they use VAR.
But the Italian was also angry with a slow start from his team, adding: “If I have to complain about something, it’s the first half. I think we had many chances and we made mistakes in the last passes, big mistakes. We must be disappointed for this reason.
“Every time we played the ball and overcame their pressure, we could hurt them. Instead, we kept them alive, then in the second half we conceded the second goal.
“We could do much better but, you know very well, when you concede a goal, you can always do something better. Then, after a few minutes, the red card killed the game.”
The result means Arsenal remain top of the Premier League, winning seven of their eight fixtures so far.
Partey broke the deadlock with a fine strike, just his third for the club and his first from outside the box at this 65th attempt.
The space afforded to the Ghana midfielder certainly helped with the finish – with Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard claiming that was not an accident.
“It was a great goal,” he said. “We knew before the game he was going to be free in those areas and we practised that a lot, to find him in those areas, and he made a great shot.
“I think he played a great game as well so a lot of credit to him.”
Odegaard also felt Jesus restoring Arsenal’s advantage so soon after Royal’s red card was key to victory, although Granit Xhaka wrapped up victory with a third goal.
“I think it (Jesus’ goal) was crucial,” added Odegaard. “We dominated the game from the start but they scored out of nothing and it was important to strike back and get the momentum again and the energy, so I think it was crucial to get the second goal.
“From that moment I think we controlled the game again and it was a solid win in the end.
“It’s always nice when you get two goals up and then after that when they had one man less we could keep the ball and I think they suffered a lot.”
