Igor Tudor says the salvage operation he has taken on at Tottenham is tougher than he envisaged and most likely his hardest job in management.<\/p>\n
The interim coach, who is preparing for Sunday\u2019s Premier League trip to Fulham, has worked with his new squad since the beginning of last week, having replaced the sacked Thomas Frank. Tudor lost his first game 4-1<\/a> at home to Arsenal on Sunday, which left Spurs four points above the relegation zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n An alarming fitness situation has improved slightly with the return to training of Pedro Porro and Kevin Danso, meaning Tudor will be without eight injured players at Fulham, plus the suspended Cristian Romero, though Micky van de Ven is expected to be fit.<\/p>\n Spurs are without a win in nine league matches and Tudor\u2019s eyes are wide open about the scale of the task. \u201cProbably, yes \u2026 I agree with you,\u201d Tudor said when asked whether the role was more difficult than expected.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very tough \u2026 but it is how it is. So daily work, focus, raising in all things we need to do \u2013 physical condition, mental confidence, performance \u2013 and waiting for the [injured] players to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n Tudor started work as a manager in 2013 and is now in his 12th job. Is Spurs the biggest challenge? \u201cProbably,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I recognise the difficulties there are, probably, yes. It\u2019s an even bigger challenge, an even bigger motivation to do this and we do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Tudor described Spurs\u2019 plight before the Arsenal game as an \u201cemergency situation\u201d and he warmed to the theme before another derby. \u201cIt\u2019s not looking to the style at this moment,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause now it\u2019s a question of life and death.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is not too much time to think about performance or style. Every game needs to be prepared in that way. How we can take these points, one way or the other?<\/p>\n \u201cIn Italy, they use the term \u2018have the mentality of a small team\u2019. That is the key, to always have motivation when you play big teams. So that\u2019s the start, of course, and we work a lot on that. The players are aware of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Frank before him, Tudor refused to use the R word \u2013 relegation. \u201cI never used it but not because it\u2019s something too scary or it\u2019s a danger word or we won\u2019t sleep,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s about that we need to refocus on ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Igor Tudor says the salvage operation he has taken on at Tottenham is tougher than he envisaged and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-492860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}