Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou felt his team didn’t start their 2-1 defeat to the Blues well in terms of tempo or intensity and gave themselves a mountain to climb.
First-half goals from Sammie Szmodics and Liam Delap gave Town a two-goal advantage at half-time with the North Londoners pulling one back through Rodrigo Bentancur in the second period, but the Blues held on for their first Premier League win in 22 years.
"We didn't start the game well at all,” Postecoglou admitted. "It was all sort of passive, without the ball, with the ball.
"I felt we didn't get the tempo right or intensity right and then we gave ourselves a mountain to climb.
"Second half we were in the ascendancy and had opportunities obviously but we didn't do enough with them.”
It wasn’t the first time Spurs have gone behind at home, they did the same before coming back to win 4-1 against Aston Villa last week, but the Australian felt the situations weren’t the same.
"They're all different sorts of scenarios,” he reflected. "When we went behind against Villa we were playing well. We weren't playing well today. So you've got to look at in isolation today, it was a different scenario for me.
"I don't think it was anything like last time. We gave ourselves too much of a deficit to try to overcome. Obviously second half we had the opportunities to do that, but we should never have been in that position.”
Spurs previously lost away against another of the division’s strugglers, Crystal Palace, 1-0, and Postecoglou accepted the blame for his side’s lacklustre displays against the Eagles and Blues.
"That's down to me,” he said. "That's my responsibility. The inconsistency we're having this year, ultimately it comes down to me and my approach and something I need to try and fix and see if I can help the players in that area.”
The former Celtic boss refused to blame his team’s busy schedule, Spurs having played away against Galatasaray in Istanbul on Thursday in the Europa League, losing 3-2.
"I shouldn't think so. I don't think so,” he said. "If we were seeing that we'd probably feel it more at the end of games and we're not feeling it at the end of games. We're finishing games strongly.
"We can't start games like that at this level and expect to overcome the gap that exists between us and the other teams.”
Postecoglou was, however, like his club’s fans, unhappy with Town’s second-half game management.
"Look, I think it's the way the Premier League is going,” he said. "It's pretty strategic now. You can almost look at your clock around the 20-minute mark and some player will go down, they'll all come over to coach and get instructions.
"It's funny, I always liked the Premier League because it wasn't like that. You would watch teams play in Europe and get frustrated by it, but now it's part of the game here as well.
"Nothing we can do about it. For us, if we want to mitigate those things because we don't do it and we want the game to be played, then we shouldn't give opportunities for the opposition to do that.”