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The more that Mathys Tel talked on Wednesday after Tottenham finally won a game under Igor Tudor – albeit the night still ended in aggregate defeat by Atlético Madrid in the Champions League last 16 – the more he seemed to approach a specific area; an admission.
Talking has very much been the theme in the Spurs dressing room in recent weeks as the club have slid down the Premier League table towards the abyss that would be relegation into the Championship.
Call it rock bottom, the point of no return. The moment when pennies drop, a wake-up call. It surely came after the first-leg at Atlético last week when Spurs lost 5-2; it could have been worse given they were 4-0 down after 22 minutes. It followed the dismal 3-1 home defeat against Crystal Palace which made it three defeats out of four for Tudor; zero new manager bounce after the club got him in to replace Thomas Frank.
The way that Tel told it, the players have closed ranks tightly, opening up to each other more and more. Perhaps, it was not the case previously, the impression from the outside being that the team were sleepwalking towards disaster. The gravity of the situation is uppermost in their thoughts, deeper bonds forming. And perhaps we have now seen the start of the revival. First, Sunday’s against-all-odds 1-1 draw at Liverpool and then the 3-2 second-leg win over Atlético.
At times like these, any green shoots will be aggressively nurtured. But the mood has been transformed before Sunday’s relegation six-pointer at home against Nottingham Forest.
“What has been the difference? Conversation in the dressing room,” Tel said. “After every loss we just keep talking to each other and something changed. We’re together. We’re just a team now. A team. I can feel it. We felt it also in the second leg against Atlético.
“I would say we are more and more together. We are talking because maybe before we didn’t speak enough. But now with the situation we talk more, more, more. And we are more about the details. In football, details make the difference and now I’m very happy about this difference.”
There will be different dynamics at work on Sunday. Nobody gave Spurs a prayer at Liverpool or in the return against Atlético and they could embrace the role of plucky underdog. That said, there was pressure on them in both games because everybody knew what the reaction would have been to further calamities. So maybe the nothing-to-lose line has not been completely there.
Against Forest, Spurs will definitely have everything to lose. They have the worst home record in the league but their fans expect a win. They will see it as the moment when they have to find an ignition point. Can the players carry the boost of beating Atlético over 90 minutes into the Forest game? Tel insists they can. He considers it as being everything to gain.
“It [winning against Atlético] means that we can be a big team,” he said. “We can show to every team that it’s not easy to play against us. We showed a big, big, big mentality against Atlético. When we go to the Premier League game, we have to play with the same energy, the same mindset.
“We believe. We have to believe and we will do it. I believe we will do it. I trust my teammates, I trust the manager, I trust everybody. If we stick together, if we show that we will do it together, we will do it.”
Tel has felt his confidence return since Tudor replaced Frank. He struggled to convince the previous manager, who omitted him from the Champions League squad at the beginning of the season and then, after recalling him for the sixth league phase game against Slavia Prague, dropped him again when Dominic Solanke recovered fitness and was allowed to be reintegrated.
Tel, who joined from Bayern Munich in the winter window of last season, initially on loan, wanted another loan in January, which did not happen. Frank did recall him for the knockout stage of the Champions League but Tel was candid about their relationship in a recent interview.
“I disagreed with Thomas on my role within the team and he didn’t like me for it,” Tel told the podcaster Zack Nani. “He didn’t look to try and fix things. I was confused why I was on the bench a lot. I felt I could help the team more than I was.”
Tel has started the past four matches under Tudor and he was positive in the second leg against Atlético, worrying them with his pace and directness, getting into dangerous areas. He set up Spurs’s first goal for Randal Kolo Muani. The only frustration was his inability to convert any of his five shots on target. Tel blew a big chance to make it 2-0 on the night when he had only the goalkeeper, Juan Musso, to beat from the corner of the six-yard box.
“I can feel that he put confidence [in me] that was needed before,” Tel said when asked about Tudor. “So we can see on the pitch I have got more confidence, I can create situations. He gave me some things that I didn’t have before.”
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