Ange Postecoglou defended his decision to make eight changes in the Carabao Cup as Tottenham survived a scare to beat Coventry 2-1 and progress to the fourth round.
Only Destiny Udogie, Rodrigo Bentancur and Dominic Solanke kept their places from Sunday’s north London derby defeat to Arsenal and Postecoglou’s side were minutes away from crashing out to the Championship club before late goals from substitutes Djed Spence and Brennan Johnson.
Goalkeeper Fraser Forster made his first appearance in a year, while Ben Davies, Radu Dragusin and teenager Archie Gray lined up in a new-look defence, and there were starts for Timo Werner and teenagers Lucas Bergvall and Wilson Odobert.
The game was the start of a run of seven Spurs matches in 21 days and, asked about his selection, Postecoglou said he needed to get minutes for his squad players.
“What I’ve always tried to do is what I think is the right thing,” he said. “The best thing for us, in terms of what we’re trying to achieve, and you know that there’s no guarantees with anything you do in football.
“But what I’ve always done is back my decisions in critical times to always do what I feel is best. And if it doesn’t work out, I can live with that. But I’m certainly not going to jeopardise what we’re trying to build here by doing something that’s going make me look like I’m in a safer position.
“So we’re always going to play these guys because we’ve got Europe starting next week. The last thing I want to do is throw guys in out of necessity.
“We need to get game time and tonight, some key players for us got some good minutes that mean that when we do need to make changes moving forward, they’ve already played and they’re ready to go.”
There appeared to be a smattering of boos from the away end when Postecoglou replaced the lively Bergvall with James Maddison shortly after the hour.
“I don’t make substitutions by poll,” he said. “So, I’m sure the fans have got their own opinions, but yeah, Lucas, that’s his first sort of significant game time for quite a while.
“What I didn’t want was us pushing guys over the edge today, that’s why we took Destiny off at half-time as well.”
Brandon Thomas-Asante put Coventry in front and Forster was forced into a number of saves, while Davies blocked a goal-bound shot from Haji Wright.
Postecoglou admitted his side had to “hang in there” but believes they showed character to seal a late comeback.
“I thought it was a typical cup game. I thought Coventry were really good,” he said. “They put some real energy into the game, and we couldn’t really get a grip on it. So we had to hang in there.
“We had to work really, really hard just to stay in the game and obviously going a goal behind makes it even more challenging.
“At the end there we showed some real spirit and character, which is probably what’s been missing in the first four games,” Postecoglou added.
“We’ve had the performance, but we haven’t had that relentlessness to get a result. You sense that in the last 10 minutes, we got real belief out of that, and hopefully that’s a good sign moving forward.”
In spite of a stirring comeback, Postecoglou warned there would be no quick fixes to Spurs’ stuttering form ahead of Saturday’s home game against Brentford.
“I have been at pains to say I don’t think there are quick fixes or easy turnarounds in things, but I thought tonight we showed a lot of what we had last year,” he said.
“Last year we showed a lot of character and spirit to win games of football. We hung in games, got a lot of late winners and I felt the first four games the performances were probably lacking that a bit.
“So, the fact we did it tonight and in the manner we did, hopefully it shows lads if we can perform at the levels we have been in the league, add that little bit of relentlessness and drive to win games then it will certainly help us.”
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