James Maddison urges Tottenham to ‘keep going and dig in’ after Liverpool rout
Spurs are 11th in the Premier League after a difficult December where their squad has been blighted by unavailability.
James Maddison rallied around Tottenham’s depleted squad and insisted they will stick together after they were hit for six by Liverpool on Sunday.
Spurs followed up Thursday’s seven-goal thriller against Manchester United in the Carabao Cup quarter-finals with another goal-bonanza in north London, but were hammered 6-3.
With eight players unavailable, Ange Postecoglou’s team could never match their midweek energy levels and trailed 5-1 midway through the second half before they hit back late on.
“To concede six goals at home obviously hurts,” Maddison told SpursPlay.
“To manage to score another three against arguably the best team in the world at the minute, there is positives there but hard to look at, at the minute.
“I am proud of the lads who kept going. It can be very easy to sit back and not let any more chances or keep a scoreline to a minimal, especially when they get the fifth.
“To be fair to the lads, they kept going, we scored another couple and we’ll keep going and dig in.
“We had a great night, a brilliant night here on Thursday and a really difficult one (against Liverpool). The good and the bad, you’ve got to stick together.”
Maddison scored in Sunday’s loss to continue his rich vein of form at a time when Tottenham have needed their leaders to step up.
Spurs have been without first-choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario and key centre-backs Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero during a hectic period of the season.
It has contributed towards a leaky defence and an inconsistent run of results, which left Tottenham 11th in the Premier League, but Maddison talked up the efforts of Fraser Forster, Djed Spence, Archie Gray and Radu Dragusin.
“It’s a busy room is the physio room at the minute, with senior players, big experienced players in there,” Maddison said.
“Credit to our young lads, who are stepping up and lads who haven’t played. I don’t want to sound like I am making excuses either but Djed only started his first Premier League game last week, Archie is 18 and we bought from the Championship.
“Radu didn’t play a lot of football last year in the Premier League and Fraser has obviously had to come in with Vic (out).
“There are a lot of lads I am proud of who keep going out because we’re rolling out the same sort of team every game at the minute because we play every three days and the squad is quite depleted with injuries.
“We’ll keep going and stick together. I can only feel for the fans but I want them to know that it hurts us as well. Results like that don’t just hurt supporters, they hurt the club on a whole.”
It was a different story for Liverpool boss Arne Slot, who highlighted the exceptional display of Dominik Szoboszlai despite braces for Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz.
“Mo and Lucho (Diaz), of course they were both with two goals and maybe the ones that stand out in terms of scoring two, but we would not do justice to Dom’s performance if we don’t name him as well,” Slot said.
“Apart from his attacking things he did, he was without the ball a very important part of our game plan and that is what he executed really well.”
