Manchester City 6 Tottenham 0: Andre Villas-Boas admits Spurs are 'ashamed' after humiliating defeat

Spurs were behind after just 14 seconds

Andre Villas-Boas the manager of Tottenham Hotspur looks on during the Barclays Premier League match between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur (Getty Images)

Andre Villas-Boas conceded that his Tottenham team should be “ashamed” of their performance in a 6-0 defeat to Manchester City, their heaviest in the Premier League in almost 17 years.

The Spurs manager saw his team lose to two goals each from Jesus Navas and Sergio Aguero, an own goal from Sandro and another from Alvaro Negredo. Villas-Boas said: “It is difficult to explain. It’s a game where everything went wrong for us from being one of the best defences in the country to conceding six goals in a fixture. It is very hard to find explanation.

“Our gameplan, confidence and motivation was immediately affected by conceding after 14 seconds. The fact we reacted positively after [the first goal]. In the first 15 minutes [after that] before it became 2-0, when we could have got back into the game, we lost control of the situation.

“Every attack was a goalscoring opportunity for them, we weren’t at our best and we have to be ashamed of a result like this.”

Villas-Boas brought Emmanuel Adebayor on at half-time, his first appearance of the season, but he chose to leave Jermain Defoe and Andros Townsend on the bench. “We needed a goal immediately [after half-time], but it didn’t happen and they went 4-0 up. That was a killer when the fourth went in. For us to sustain attacking impetus we had to change formation again and we couldn’t create enough. Our head was gone after the fourth goal.

“It is two defeats in a row. The reality is that we are still in touch to teams who share our objective. We haven’t lost a lot, with one fixture everything can change again and we can get a lift up from three points.

“But we have to get back to work and focus on our mistakes and work on that. A team that has been praised defensively for what they have done must find its balance and we will try to help the players

“The only thing astonishing in this league is that surprising results can happen. City were on four defeats [before this game], we are on four defeats. It’s such an early stage of the season. I think December and January will be decisive in how the league will finish. At the moment you can be third and then you can be ninth.

“We are the ones chasing, but we play the champions next week and if we get three points we are back again. Our most important task is to get back into the players. The reality is for us to come back into this game is that we had to score and we never had a proper chance to score.”

Manuel Pellegrini said that Joe Hart will play in Wednesday’s Champions League game against Plzen in the Czech Republic. The City captain Vincent Kompany will be back in training this week. Jesus Navas’ goal on 14 seconds was the fourth fastest in the history of the Premier League.

Pellegrini said: “It’s not normal to win by six goals, against a team as strong as Tottenham, but we played really well and defended very well too.

“Of course I was surprised [at the result], but we have played six games at home and scored 26 goals. I am more happy with how we play as a team, defending and attacking.”

Asked for his personal reaction to the defeat, Villas-Boas said that everyone at the club felt “embarrassed”. He said: “My emotions are not very important. I don’t need to point out individuals, but to lose 6-0 is extremely embarrassing for anyone involved in that. It is the worst defeat for all of us involved in Tottenham because we have high expectations and losing 6-0 to a rival, international players to suffer this, tends to stick more.

“It is a bad moment for everybody. We can only look into ourselves and make sure we can go forward.”