Harry Winks admits he felt his Tottenham career was "dead and buried" before Antonio Conte's arrival and has also bemoaned Spurs allowing Southampton to "suffocate" them on Wednesday night.
Spurs were woeful at home on Wednesday, throwing away two leads to the Saints, who had 23 shots at goal compared to the hosts' meagre eight.
Winks struggled in the middle alongside Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg to contain Southampton's surges up the pitch and it was a bad day at the office for many in a Spurs shirt.
"It was very frustrating. It was a poor performance and result," said Winks. "When we're not playing well but leading, we need to find a way of not conceding.
"If we're not playing well, we need to defend well, be resilient and hard to break today. Today we were too passive, too easy to play against and defensively as a team it wasn't solid enough."
Tottenham still have their top four destiny in their own hands somewhat due to their games in hand but this was another match that showed the scale of the task on Conte's hands to get consistency from his team.
"I wouldn't say it was a wake up call. We haven't been getting ahead of ourselves. We know it's a process," said Winks.
"We're playing in the Premier League against top opposition. They're a top side, they're strong and aggressive and we have to be at our best to beat them.
"Unfortunately we were poor. We let them play, we let them suffocate us and it wasn't a good enough performance."
He added: "It's important, today was a key game for us to try to win, especially at home. You want to try take advantage of that and try to get as many wins as possible at home.
"We've got a game against Wolves on Sunday, another difficult opposition, and we've got to do better than we did today. They're a strong opposition and they can hurt us and we don't want to come away with another poor result."
On the plus side for Winks, he has found himself getting regular football under Conte after struggling to do so under his predecessors Nuno Espirito Santo and Jose Mourinho.
The 26-year-old admitted that it felt like his Spurs career was edging towards its end before the Italian's arrival.
"The manager's come in and given me a chance, given me confidence again," he said. "Every game I play, every training session I have that hunger to try to impress him and do everything I can to try to improve.
"Like I said before, my career at Tottenham was probably dead and buried but he's come in and given me an opportunity to show myself and prove myself.
"For that, every time I get an opportunity I really want to impress the manager and show myself and repay that faith he's shown in me and put it back to me."
When pushed further on that "dead and buried" claim, he tempered his statement slightly, adding: "Well, I wouldn't say it was completely dead and buried but my chances at Tottenham were looking slim.
"I wasn't getting opportunities and it might have looked like I would need to leave the club.
"I don't know, but as I said, the new manager's come in and given everyone an equal opportunity, which is all I wanted under the last two managers, and now it's down to me to take that.
"So I wouldn't say it was as strong as that but it was looking slim because the facts were that I wasn't playing as much as I wanted to."
