Ange Postecoglou has taken responsibility for Tottenham's form, saying their inconsistency “comes down to me and my approach” following Sunday's 2-1 defeat to Ipswich.
Spurs followed up the 4-1 home thrashing of Aston Villa last weekend with a deserved loss to the Tractor Boys, who recorded their first Premier League win in 22 years.
Postecoglou's Spurs have now won five and lost five of their 11 League games and sit 10th in the table going into the November international break.
The Spurs head coach described his side as “passive” in the first half after criticised their “intensity”, but says their off-days are “down to me”.
“That's my responsibility. The inconsistency we're having this year, ultimately it comes down to me and my approach and something I need to try and fix and see if I can help the players in that area," said Postecoglou.
“We didn't start the game well at all. It was all sort of passive, without the ball, with the ball. I felt we didn't get the tempo right or intensity right and then we gave ourselves a mountain to climb. Second half we were in the ascendancy and had opportunities obviously but we didn't do enough with them.”
Sammie Szmodics opened the scoring for Ipswich with a canny overhead kick to make it 13 times in 2024 that Spurs have fallen behind at home in the Premier League.
Asked if there was a pattern, Postecoglou said: “They're all different sorts of scenarios. When we went behind against Villa [last weekend] we were playing well.
“We weren't playing well today. So you've got to look at in isolation today, it was a different scenario for me. I don't think it was anything like last time.
“We gave ourselves too much of a deficit to try to overcome. Obviously second half we had the opportunities to do that, but we should never have been in that position.”
Liam Delap doubled Ipswich's lead in the first half before a characteristic rally from Spurs, who halved the deficit when Rodrigo Bentancur headed home a corner with 20 minutes to play.
Postecoglou and the home crowd were frustrated by Ipswich's delaying tactics, with the head coach believing “strategic” time-wasting is now commonplace in the Premier League.
“It's the way the Premier League is going,” Postecoglou said. “It's pretty strategic now. You can almost look at your clock around the 20-minute mark and some player will go down, they'll all come over to coach and get instructions.
“It's funny I always liked the Premier League because it wasn't like that. You would watch teams play in Europe and get frustrated by it, but now it's part of the game here as well. Nothing we can do about it.
“For us, if we want to mitigate those things because we don't do it and we want the game to be played, then we shouldn't give opportunities for the opposition to do that.”
