Son Heung-min slams ‘soft’ Spurs for defeat to West Ham

Tottenham Hotspur captain Son Heung-min branded his team “soft” after they made it five games without a win by losing to London rivals West Ham United.

Second-half goals from Jarrod Bowen and James Ward-Prowse secured West Ham’s comeback win after Cristian Romero had given Spurs an early lead.

An angry Son, who was among the Spurs players, along with Dejan Kulusevski, who confronted referee Michael Salisbury at the end, said: “Deserved better or not means nothing, we lost the game. It is unacceptable. You are winning. Losing that game I think is unacceptable. As a player [we] should take responsibility.

“They are tough to play against. We knew what was coming, but we were soft. We were soft. 1-0 is not enough, you have to try and win the game.

“It is unacceptable. The fans do not deserve this. When you go 1-0 up early you should bring more energy and play with more energy, but we didn’t and that is why we lost.

“When you have the chances to kill the game you have to play better. We lost the game, we have to move on and bounce back.

“Attacking players should feel responsible because we had chances to kill the game. I know it is very sad for the fans and they are disappointed. As a group, we want to bounce back as soon as possible.”

Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou was also upset with the way his team surrendered the lead and claimed that his team have to do more than “put on a show.”

“It’s another game where we’ve dominated the game and we haven’t turned that dominance into something more tangible,” said Postecoglou. “I thought we were poor in both boxes today. We missed some chances and they were terrible goals to concede.

“Us being good means us being 3-0 up. I try to set up teams to win games. 1-0 at half-time was not a good performance. A good performance would have been three or four up as it should have been against Villa.

“There’s not enough conviction. We’re playing so-called good football, but I see us not showing any clear conviction in what we’re doing. It’s almost like we hope the ball will go into the net by itself.

“We’ve played some decent football, great. But, ultimately, we play to try to win games not to just put on a show. There’s no point us feeling sorry for ourselves.”

Asked what Kulusevski and Son were upset with the referee for, Postecoglou replied: “I don’t know. We didn’t lose the game because of the ref.”