Chief Mourinho ally comes out to clear the Tottenham air

The Tottenham squad is fully behind Jose Mourinho after they bounced back from a horrific week with a 2-0 win at Aston Villa, according to Lucas Moura.

Spurs followed up a limp defeat in the north London derby with an embarrassing Europa League exit to Dinamo Zagreb that led to a full and public inquest.

Mourinho accused his players of lacking professionalism while captain Hugo Lloris revealed deep issues in a television interview.

Lloris claimed fringe players were causing trouble, perhaps hinting at some of the stories leaked to the press about Mourinho’s training methods, and suggested the Europa League result was a consequence of deep-rooted problems at the club.

And Mourinho followed that up with comments on his own on Sunday alluding to the tough nature of blending a dressing room.

“Football is not easy. The individual interests are around. The agents are around. The connections between agent and press are around,” said the Spurs boss.

Mourinho: Incredible attitude, incredible effort

Jose Mourinho says Tottenham showed incredible attitude and effort in the win over Aston Villa which should be permanent within his side going forward.

“Instead of a feeling of team empathy – I do for you, you do for me – you need time to develop this in a group. Society and psychological profile of young people is not an easy one.”

Moura though is a key ally of Mourinho. He laid on Carlos Vinicius’ opener at Villa Park and also had a hand in the move that saw Harry Kane seal the win and with a penalty.

And he says the squad retains belief in the under-pressure Mourinho.

“We are all together. We’re in the same boat. We lose together, we win together,” he said.

“What happened in Croatia was our fault. Everyone is included. When we’re on the pitch, we just want to win.

“There are a lot of fans behind the TV supporting us. We play for our family, we play for pride and we’re all together.

“We believe in the coach, we believe in the coach because we know his history and we just want to be successful here.

“The last two games were very bad, the feeling was very bad. Today we showed our nature, we showed attitude.

“The good thing about football is you don’t have time to cry. You have a lot of games to play and in each game you can do differently. We did differently today, we deserved that win and I’m very happy for that.”

Despite the negativity around the club after those two bad results, the win at Villa kept Spurs in the race for the Premier League top four, as they sit three points behind Chelsea.

With nine games to go and a Carabao Cup final against Manchester City to look forward to next month, Spurs’ season is very much alive.

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Moura has eyes on top four

“Let’s go. With luck. We have nine games to play, we have a final, let’s finish the season well,” Moura added.

“(Top four) is still possible of course. We’ll fight until the end to give everything.

“If we play like we played today of course we can reach the top four. It’s our objective of course but let’s think step by step, game by game. We will give everything for this.”

Villa’s troubles without injured star man Jack Grealish continue as they struggled to create any clear-cut chances and their season is dwindling to an unspectacular end.

Boss Dean Smith said: “I thought our play up until the final third was quite good, I thought we started the game, the first 30 minutes, good and they scored against the run of play with their first effort.

“But when you’re having good periods in this league, you’ve got to be creating opportunities and it’s something we were doing earlier in the season and we haven’t done lately.”

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