Ange Postecoglou believes his Tottenham side "fell into the trap" of letting their 1-0 defeat to struggling Crystal Palace "turn into a battle".
Jean-Phillipe Mateta's first-half strike earned Palace a first League win of the season and continued Spurs' up and down domestic form this season.
Palace battled superbly, pressing Spurs into repeatedly mistakes on the ball, in a scrappy game which was short on quality, particularly from the visitors.
Postecoglou says his side needed to be more "clear headed" and impose their game on Palace.
"It was a game which turned into -- and it didn’t surprise me -- a bit of a battle," the Spurs head coach said afterwards.
"Lots of stop, starting and standing around. We didn’t deal with that well at all. We didn’t get to grips with just the nature of what was transpiring out there. It turned into a bit of a battle. They dealt with it better than we did.
"It was a game we needed to stay composed and not sort of fall into the trap of trying to play the game ultimately Palace wanted to play.
"It turned into a game that was battle after battle, duels, stop starts, waiting around. We need to be a lot more clear-headed about how we deal with that rather than fall into the trap of doing what we did today.
"It was a big game for Palace they were always going to be desperate to get a win and that happens. I just thought there was a lot of standing around today which I hate, I’ve said that before. But I guess it’s just the nature of the way the game went."
Asked if his players needed to be more physical to match Palace, Postecoglou continued: "If you want to play that sort of game, but there's another way of dealing with it as well. By staying more composed and not falling into the trap of it turning into that sort of game.
"I don't want to play them at their own game. What I want to try to do is get people to adjust to playing our game.
"Some of it is out of control because they're obviously going to be pretty aggressive in their approach, which is not a surprise.
"And how the referee deals with that, not so much in terms of the challenges but in terms of stoppages and taking their time, all of that is out of our control.
"But I just felt when we had control of things, we could have dealt with it better. We ended up doing silly things, giving away silly fouls and losing our composure, which just adds to that sort of game when you can't get any traction.
"So I think we directed our frustration in the wrong way rather than dealing with it like we should have."
Mateta finished at the far post after a brilliant flick from man-of-the-match Eberechi Eze but Spurs gave away possession carelessly in the build-up, with Cristian Romero playing a risky pass across the box to Micky van de Ven who lost the ball to Daniel Munoz.
"It was a poor goal to concede because the game was always an arm wrestle," added Postecoglou. "It was never going to be one with bags of chances or really open so to concede like that was disappointing."
The result overshadowed the full League debut of Spurs' winger Mikey Moore, 17, who played for just over an hour before being replaced by Timo Werner.
"Every time he's out there he'll be a better player and the more we can get him out there in the right sort of environment then he'll keep thriving," Postecoglou said. "I'm sure he'll learn a lot today. The kind of team we want to be or the way we want to play we need to be a lot more composed in the way we deal with certain things out there to not let the game get out of control."
