Ben Davies has admitted that Will Lankshear was “devastated” in the Tottenham dressing room following the team’s 3-2 Europa League defeat against Galatasaray. It proved to be a night of mixed emotions for the young striker as he marked his second senior start for Spurs with his first goal for the club.
Lankshear, who plundered goals for fun for the club’s Under-21s last season, was in the right position in the 18th minute to convert from point-blank range from Brennan Johnson’s cross. It was an extremely impressive Tottenham goal as Archie Gray played a delightful ball over the top to Johnson, who then crossed first time for the striker to finish off and silence the fans inside RAMS Park.
Lankshear did have a chance to double his tally early in the second half but experienced goalkeeper Fernando Muslera was on hand to deny him in the area. Not long after that miss, Lankshear saw red after picking up his second bookable offence.
Seven minutes after his first caution, the 19-year-old was given a second yellow after fouling former Norwich City man Gabriel Sara. Lankshear believed he should have won a foul seconds earlier, thus seeing him immediately get to his feet before catching the Galatasaray man with a late challenge right in front of the dugouts.
He was given his marching orders as a result and looked completely gutted to be dismissed from the field. Tottenham teammate Pedro Porro did sprint over to console him before he headed down the tunnel.
The 10 men of Tottenham did manage to find a way back into the contest courtesy of Dominic Solanke’s cute finish but there was to be no third goal for the visitors as Galatasaray held on for victory. Speaking to SPURSPLAY after the game, Davies revealed that Lankshear was “gutted” in the dressing room after the game but he knows his young teammate will learn from it.
“Probably a little bit too late,” he said when asked about the second-half fightback and getting on top in the closing stages. “Unfortunately for Will it is tough and these things happen but he’ll learn from that. Look, he’s pretty devastated in there but it’s up to us to help him through it now. It was a valiant fight in the end but not quite enough.”
He added: “He’s gutted in there, he feels like he’s probably let the team down. It’s just part and parcel of football. Every game is different, every circumstance is different and tonight when he went off we went down to ten men and we had to work hard. It’s one of those things. The game is done now and he will learn from that for sure.”
Davies also gave his verdict on a game where Tottenham gifted their opponents chance after chance, notably in the first half and immediately after half-time.
“It was a tough game, especially in the first half our mistakes were our biggest downfall,” explained the Wales international. “We need to handle the atmosphere a bit better than we did in the first half because by the end of the game, even with ten men, we were probably the only team really pushing for it.
“We always felt we had a pretty good chance if we kept pushing but we probably left ourselves a little bit too much to do.”
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