Mauricio Pochettino thanks Christian Eriksen for taking scoring burden off Hary Kane in 3-0 destruction of Hull
Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino praised Christian Eriksen for reducing the scoring burden on Harry Kane with a brace in a 3-0 win over Hull City at White Hart Lane.
Eriksen scored twice and assisted another for Victor Wanyama as Tottenham recovered from defeat at Manchester United on Sunday with a comfortable victory.
"I’m very pleased for his performance today, he was very aggressive in possession," said Pochettino. "That is the aggression we want for our players — his run for the second goal"
"I’m very pleased for him because he’s working very hard to try and improve. It’s very important for us that not only our strikers score goals but our secondary players score too. It is good for us and for the team that they start to score too."
Hull had barely ventured into the home side’s half before finding themselves behind when a typically speedy Spurs attack was converted by star man Christian Eriksen on 13 minutes.
Danny Rose latched onto a Jan Vertonghen’s long ball and after turning inside Hull’s Ahmed Elmohamady, laid on a cut back for Eriksen to smash into the roof of the net.
Dele Alli twice went close doubling Spurs’ lead before the break but was denied by keeper David Marshall on both occasions.
Hull’s best opportunities fell to former Spurs man Jake Livermore 10 minutes either side of half-time. The central midfielder’s first forced a rare save from Hugo Lloris by flicking Andrew Robertson’s low cross towards goal and later had two shots blocked off the line shortly before the hour mark.
“What I was really pleased with was that we actually created those chances,” said Hull manager Mike Phelan. “I kept expressing that to the players, to be forward thinking, on the front foot and if we take our chances we’ve got a game on.
“But the quality came through in the end for Tottenham.”
Yet such were the rarity of Hull’s ventures forward, the game was all but put to bed moments later when Eriksen grabbed his second on 62 minutes.
Using a similar formula to the opener, Eric Dier, playing on the right side of a back three, set free Kyle Walker who crossed to Eriksen at the back post after driving to the byline.
Eriksen came within inches of a hat-trick 10 minutes later by striking the inside of the post with a free-kick, but Victor Wanyama was on hand to tap home the rebound and add gloss to the scoreline.