The 38-year-old former footballer is the manager of the Premier League club and despite losing 1-0 to Arsenal on Friday (27.12.24), he is pleased with how his team performed throughout the match.

He told BBC Sports: "I thought we were compact, we were resilient. We were the things that we needed to be and I think we were disappointed with the goal because it was one of the real bits of defending in our six-yard box and we needed to do most of that. The rest of the first half was not really penetrating the box very much.

"Of course, second half, when you open up a little bit more there's more threat for them as well. I felt like we got some really good positions and pinned them back a little bit and give ourselves a chance to get something from the game."

The former Tottenham Hotspur star had also seen a defeat for his team against Newcastle in the days before Christmas, and noted how that loss put them in a good position for their match with Arsenal.

He said: "I think it was a good step back in the right direction, Newcastle. It was pretty out of kilter how we've been all season really but certainly the long-running games before that since anyone has pulled away from us.

"But Newcastle were good enough to do that and we didn't quite hit our level, so today we knew we needed to be solid, resilient, we needed to show the gith characteristics in that aspect and I thought we'd done that. That's how we managed to keep the game competitive."