Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand has accused Jose Mourinho of damaging the confidence of his Tottenham players with his negative comments ahead of their Champions League elimination at the hands of Leipzig.
Already boasting a 1-0 lead from the first leg, Leipzig picked up where the left off on Tuesday night as Marcel Sabitzer completed a first-half brace to put them in total control of the last-16 tie.
Second-half substitute Emil Forsberg extended Leipzig’s advantage with his first touch at the Red Bull Arena to send the hosts through with an emphatic 4-0 aggregate victory.
After Leipzig’s defeat in the first leg, Mourinho used Tottenham’s injuries as an excuse for their lacklustre performance – saying it was like “going to a gun fight without bullets” – and Ferdinand believes this will have had a detrimental impact on those players who were fit.
‘You’ve got to build them up and give them confidence,’ Ferdinand on BT Sport said following Tottenham’s second-leg defeat in Germany.
‘Talking about “going to a gun fight without bullets” – what does that do to the confidence of the likes of Dele Alli, Lucas Moura?
‘That [confidence-building] hasn’t been forthcoming from Jose. You see a hint of that in the performance tonight against Leipzig.
‘He has got injuries, big injuries to big players, but sometimes there’s an element of desire you want to see from all your players but that was lacking.’
Ferdinand added: ‘You want to see something that seems mapped out and planned. There seemed no identity with that team.
‘There was no intensity or desire from that team. Those are the questions you ask yourself.
‘That’s the duty of a manager. When the times are hard and they’re difficult, it’s down to the manager to pick them up.
‘Players watch press conferences, but, more importantly at the training ground, that’s where you pick them up. It doesn’t look like he’s done that.’
Ferdinand has backed Liverpool to overturn their first-leg defeat to Atletico Madrid and progress through to the Champions League quarter-finals this evening.
‘I can’t wait. It will be a great atmosphere,’ the former England defender added.
‘The experience of last season [beating Barcelona] and the atmosphere that Anfield creates, you can’t bet against Liverpool.
‘They’re team that know how to win. They can win ugly, they can pull it back and drag a result back.
‘They have the experience last season of coming back from a position where everybody thought they were out. I think they have a huge, huge chance.’
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