Igor Tudor insisted never in his career has he thought about his future and all he wants to do is focus on building on his first point as Tottenham’s interim head coach.
Richarlison scored in the 90th minute to snatch a 1-1 draw at Liverpool and slightly ease some of the pressure on the Croatian, who had lost his first five matches after taking over from Thomas Frank as the team continued its slide towards the Premier League’s relegation zone.
But Tudor is far from in the clear with Spurs only a point above the bottom three and with their Champions League campaign looking like ending next week against Atletico Madrid the visit of fellow strugglers Nottingham Forest next weekend will be crucial.
“I am coaching 15 years, never was thinking one second about my future,” Tudor told a press conference after a tetchy exchange in his post-match television interview in which he appeared to think his future was being questioned.
“I never think about my future, my past, I always think about training tomorrow, how to help the players.
“I don’t read nothing, don’t watch nothing, future is just imagination, future don’t exist (sic). It’s a constant thing of today, of tomorrow, training.”
Tudor said the result brought some “fresh air” and helped boost the confidence of players who had been on a seven-match losing run which preceded his arrival.
“(It was a) good team spirit, seeing the circumstances the team was in today coming here at Anfield with 12 players (absent),” he added.
“So this is something big. We stayed in the game, we believed, I felt that we could score the goal, the players also felt it, so it’s nice.
“It’s a long way to our goal, which is to stay in the Premier League, but today was important to show what they showed, independent of the result.”
Liverpool were booed off after conceding in the 90th minute or later for the eighth Premier League match this season with Dominik Szobozslai’s 18th-minute free-kick long forgotten.
“I think it’s understandable for fans to be frustrated because it has happened so many times that they have seen the home team not picking up the points they are expecting, us conceding goals in the last minute,” said head coach Arne Slot.
“Now it is up to us to bring that frustration to Wednesday (as they seek to overturn a 1-0 deficit to Galatasaray in the Champions League) and come up with a big performance because we are all frustrated. That is completely clear.
“It is now up to me and the players to take that frustration to Wednesday evening and show the fans the performance and the result they deserve because they have been supportive throughout the whole season to us.
“Of course, it’s damaging (conceding late goals) but how many times has this been damaging for us? We don’t help ourselves at all.
“So many times this season we have created much more xG or chances than the amount of goals we score.
“The game stays tight until the end and we struggle to keep clean sheets. We haven’t had as many clean sheets as you’d want if you want to go higher up in the table and that’s a bad combination for picking up the amount of points we want to pick up.”
