Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier has explained how his team's gameplan to frustrate Tottenham for an hour and then to hit them didn't quite work.
The Reds lost the game 2-1 despite pulling a goal back in a frantic finale to the game and having a last-gasp penalty appeal turned down.
"In English football you have to expect even the best teams to drop their game," claimed Houllier. "Maybe we thought this would be a game when we could frustrate them until half time and then play better in the second half, because we always seem to have better second halves than first halves.
"I don't think we have a level of maturity at the moment to manage that in a game like this. You can do it in a game against a lower division team in the FA Cup, but when you have a game like this, in English football, you cannot say, 'Okay, we'll frustrate them for about an hour and then we'll hit them'. To me, even a bad Liverpool should have got something out of this game."